Question

PC Speaker / system beep not working on Mandriva 2009.1

Asked by: martin

I have just installed Mandriva 2009.1 on a couple of PCs and the PC speaker / system beep is not working.
When I run:
echo -e "\a"
in an xterm or konsole there is no beep.

lsmod shows that the pcspkr module is installed:
pcspkr                  2268  0

The speaker beeps on startup and shutdown.

"xset q" says:
bell percent:  100    bell pitch:  400    bell duration:  50

"xrdb -query" says:
XTerm*audibleBell:      true

kmixer has the PC Speaker volume at 100%

Clicking on the "test" button in:
System Settings -> Notification -> System bell
does produce a beep.

beep-1.2.2-9mdv2009.0 installed via urpmi does not work (even as root)
   -- it seems to be writing to /dev/tty0 instead of /dev/console
beep-1.2.2 compiled from source *does* work, but only when run as root
echo -e "\a" >/dev/console   works as non-root
echo -e "\a" > $tty          doesn't work

The machine is a Dell Dimension 4100, I have also reproduced the problem on a Dell Precision 380 using a live CD.

See: https://qa.mandriva.com/show_bug.cgi?id=53478

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Asked On
2009-10-05 at 02:50:16ID24784929
Tags

linux

,

Mandriva 2009.1

,

system beep

,

internal speaker

,

terminal bell

Topics

Linux Setup

,

Mandrake Linux

,

X-Windows Window Manager

Participating Experts
1
Points
0
Comments
14

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Answers

 

by: gheistPosted on 2009-10-05 at 21:29:04ID: 25501891

Does it work with xterm without redirecting output to file defined by nonexisting
variable ($TTY should be the one)

 

by: martinPosted on 2009-10-06 at 01:40:29ID: 25502869

gheist: Thanks for your suggestions. As I said above:

echo -e "\a"

(without any redirection) doesn 't work. $tty (not $TTY as you wrote) is the device file for the current terminal: for example, one of my xterms gives $tty the value /dev/pts/2. /dev/tty is another way to access the current terminal, so:

echo hello
echo hello >$tty
echo hello >/dev/tty

all echo "hello" on the current terminal.

Bug 45386 is about changes to sound-scripts which set the PC Speaker volume to zero by default. As I said above, I used kmixer to reset the PC Speaker volume to 100%.

 

by: gheistPosted on 2009-10-06 at 02:22:59ID: 25503097

Your terminal software is not configured for system beep. Like konsole or gnome-term are normally not.

 

by: martinPosted on 2009-10-06 at 03:11:42ID: 25503361

I have tried everything I can find in konsole configuration. I have the same problem with xterm (which is what I normally use). My .Xdefaults file includes this line for xterm:

XTerm*audibleBell: true

The beep works fine on Mandriva 2006.0 on the same machine.

 

by: gheistPosted on 2009-10-07 at 00:57:28ID: 25512954

Does it work before sound scripts?

 

by: martinPosted on 2009-10-07 at 02:27:09ID: 25513407

gheist wrote:
> Does it work before sound scripts?

I am not sure what you mean. I tried editing /etc/rc.d/rc.alsa_default to take out references to the speaker, to see if that made a difference. But the script only sets the default volume, which can be changed with kmix anyway.

 

by: martinPosted on 2009-10-07 at 06:36:10ID: 25515144

In an attempt to track down the source of the problem, I downloaded
the source for xterm from here: http://invisible-island.net/xterm/
and compiled it and found to my surprise
that the beep worked correctly for my copy of xterm!

The problem appears to be with Mandriva's version of xterm (and konsole).

 

by: martinPosted on 2009-10-07 at 09:57:16ID: 25517490

The problem turned out to be a bug in xterm version 242 (the version installed in Mandriva 2009.1) which is fixed in version 249.

I still have no idea why the bell doesn't work in konsole: unless it shares code with xterm? But I only use xterm anyway :-)

 

by: gheistPosted on 2009-10-08 at 02:36:30ID: 25523440

Fine with me.
try http://easyurpmi.zarb.org/ and urpmi --auto-update for proper xterm build.

 

by: martinPosted on 2009-10-08 at 03:13:03ID: 25523619

Out of curiosity, I tested a couple of other terminals: rxvt and gnome-terminal and found that the PC speaker works with both of them.

I'll leave it to someone else to track down the bug in konsole!

 

by: gheistPosted on 2009-10-08 at 03:18:27ID: 25523647

konsole beeps using soundcard via kde system unless you set KDE to pass beeps.

 

by: martinPosted on 2009-10-08 at 03:33:09ID: 25523743

I know. I have ticked the box "Use system bell instead of system notification" in the "Notifications" tab in System settings, and (as descibed above), clicking the "test" button rings the bell, but konsole doesn't.

I created a bug report on bugs.kde.org for konsole.

 

by: gheistPosted on 2009-10-08 at 03:36:13ID: 25523762

Looks like how it should work.

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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