Comment 45 for bug 331589

In addition, this Fix is committed BUT not released yet. I believe it should be released in an upcoming kernel update.

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-----Original Message-----
From: Chris Dickson <email address hidden>

Date: Mon, 27 Apr 2009 13:03:39
To: <email address hidden>
Subject: [Bug 331589] Re: system beep in jaunty is the most annoying sound
 known to man

As has previously been mentioned and detailed you can manually disable
the pc speaker if you desire:

To get rid of most of the "alerts" (for instance in the terminal): System - Preferences - Sound - Sounds, then uncheck "Play alert sound"
==> This won't however stop the system beeping on shutdown

To get rid of the shutdown beep (and perhaps making that last step
redundent) you should blacklist the pc speaker:

In a terminal type "gksu gedit /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf"
=>This will open gedit, go to the last line in the file.

Type "blacklist pcspkr" without quotes onto a blank line at the end of
this file and then save and close gedit.

This has all been said further up this report.

--
system beep in jaunty is the most annoying sound known to man
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/331589
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Status in “linux” source package in Ubuntu: Fix Committed
Status in linux in Ubuntu Jaunty: Fix Committed

Bug description:
SRU justification:

Impact: Having the speaker beep enabled for snd-hda-intel cards produces a very intrusive noise which is more annoying than helpful.

Fix: For now disable the system beep in that driver.

Testcase: Working in a virtual terminal doing some action that causes a beep.

---

I am seeing this problem on Jaunty and have been since I first installed. I am currently running Ubuntu 9.04 Alpha 4 with updates as of 18 Feb 2009. The current system beep is *EXTREMELY* annoying (even more annoying than people who feel the need to write in all caps). I'm surprised my ear drums have not burst yet (I'm not kidding). This sound is what I imagine I would hear if I were to stick my tongue into a 240V socket, except that might hurt less.

This same laptop worked fine with Intrepid and Hardy. Though sound doesn't work today it has certainly worked in the past. Regardless of whether any other system sound works the Annoying System Beep (tm) persists. I don't dare use headphones for fear the system might decide to beep.

I have tried disabling the system beep a number of ways:

 * blacklisted pcspkr in /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist
 * Add `xset b off` and `xset b 0 0 0` in various session files
 * Add `set bell-style none` in ~/.bashrc and ~/.profile

I am now able to turn it off in the GNOME Sound preferences (thanks Bug #325778!), but that doesn't stop the system from beeping when in a virtual terminal or if I'm not running X at all. Regardless, turning the sound off is merely a work-around. I have not yet tried shutting down, but the system used to beep then too (different bug afaik).

$ lspci -vv -s 00:1b.0
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) HD Audio Controller (rev 02)
 Subsystem: Dell Device 0209
 Control: I/O- Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR+ FastB2B- DisINTx-
 Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B- ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR- INTx-
 Latency: 0, Cache Line Size: 64 bytes
 Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 21
 Region 0: Memory at f6ffc000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
 Capabilities: <access denied>
 Kernel driver in use: HDA Intel
 Kernel modules: snd-hda-intel

Please let me know what information might be useful.