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    How do I turn off the system beep ??

    Discussion in 'Linux Compatibility and Software' started by wearetheborg, Jul 1, 2008.

  1. wearetheborg

    wearetheborg Notebook Virtuoso

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    Its driving me nuts.

    Code: 
     # rmmod pcspkr
ERROR: Module pcspkr does not exist in /proc/modules

    And I have it blacklisted in modprob.d

    ???
     
    wearetheborg, Jul 1, 2008
    #1
  2. Gintoki

    Gintoki Notebook Prophet

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    System>Preferences>Sound>System Beep tab>Un-tick "Enable System Beep"
     
    Gintoki, Jul 1, 2008
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  3. wearetheborg

    wearetheborg Notebook Virtuoso

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    It was unchecked :(
     
    wearetheborg, Jul 1, 2008
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  4. Gintoki

    Gintoki Notebook Prophet

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    Then it's not system beep you're hearing. Although, some applications might still beep even though you have it disabled. Maybe.....
     
    Gintoki, Jul 1, 2008
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  5. jeffsmythe

    jeffsmythe Notebook Geek

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    how about xset -b ?
     
    jeffsmythe, Jul 1, 2008
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  6. lemur

    lemur Emperor of Lemurs

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    Yeah, that can get complicated. On my NAS removing pcspkr solved the problem but I'm running Ubuntu server there, no desktop environment.

    When you have a desktop environment, it can decide to handle the beeps that would normally be handled by pcspkr. So the beep now goes through the desktop environment software and out through ALSA or something.

    Any clue as to what software emits the beep?
     
    lemur, Jul 1, 2008
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  7. jasperjones

    jasperjones Notebook Evangelist

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    OP, IIRC, you're running SUSE. What did the trick for me was to change the file /etc/inputrc (as root): edit the line saying "set bell-style audible" to "set bell-style none"

    EDIT: I think in addition to that, I also set "setterm -blength 0" in one of the startup files to disable the pc speaker in the terminal.
     
    jasperjones, Jul 1, 2008
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  8. lemur

    lemur Emperor of Lemurs

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    That takes care of application which use libreadline to parse commands. The most prominent example of this is bash.

    As you say that takes care of the terminal but if an X application decides to ring a bell, you need to tweak other settings.

    Now that I think of it, Open Office is a good example of software that does sometimes ring the bell but is not affected by either /etc/inputrc nor setterm. I use KDE so what I did was go into KDE's settings to set the bell to be visual rather than audible. So when Open Office rings the bell, its window is momentarily displayed in inverted colors. That's something which was developed for deaf users I think but I like to keep my computer silent in class and I still want to be warned if there is a problem so I prefer the visual bell to no bell.
     
    lemur, Jul 1, 2008
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  9. wearetheborg

    wearetheborg Notebook Virtuoso

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    Both of the above did not work (Though I did not reboot the system)
    Typing
    Code: 
    xset -b b 0
    worked

    The beeps were coming from
    1.Gnome terminal (shell) - I was able to disable this in the program
    2.xemacs - I was able to disable this by adding
    Code: 
     (setq visible-bell t)
    to init.el
    3.xpdf - this I had not been able to turn off before xset.
    speakers working fine.
     
    wearetheborg, Jul 1, 2008
    #9