Linux can be annoying with all its bells and beeps, especially if you’re working on a console. But there is no need to kill a wire or smash the speaker to silence the computer. This is a nice way of doing so, without hardware modifications.
Most reasons for beeps are tab complete beeps, as you are using the tab button to let bash complete a command or path for you. The beeping there is configured in /etc/inputrc. Just insert this line
set bell-style none
to silence it. If you want a flashing screen instead, you might want to try
set bell-style visual
But if you are working in the X11 graphical environment, those settings are not working. Use xset instead:
xset -b
and voila – the box is silenced.
Brian says:
I just don’t compile PC speaker support into my kernel. Problem solved.
Stargazer says:
Well – sometimes I need the pc speaker. So I prefer temporarily disabling it
Chris Merriman says:
I had a problem with my PC beeping as well, though the solution was indeed hardware based, as the alert was my case’s independent speaker, not connected to the motherboard.
I have a P4 3.6GHz that runs very hot, and my case has basic temperature monitoring built in. Sadly it does not have wonderful airflow, so within 5 minutes of the PC being turned on, I would get this incessant beeping. Kazakhstan goes down to minus 40c in the winter, but +40c in the summer, until we get air conditioning, the case is always too hot!
The solution was to desolder the piezo electric thingy from the case, and keep SpeedFan running on hot days :)
Stargazer says:
That’s hot. I tried to optimize my laptop with powertop to let it ‘sleep’ more and throttled the cpu while it waits. My primary goal was more battery time. A side effect is that it does not get that hot. Maybe that helps a bit too.
Schrottie says:
Ich mache mir das leichter: Ich höre bei der Arbeit am Rechner generell einen Online-Rocksender, da ist die Musik so laut, das ich nichtmals einkommende VoIP-Anrufe mitbekomme. ;-)
Stargazer says:
Bei entsprechenden Soundmöbeln und -karte stellt das das Problem generell in Frage :)