[Bug 1254527] [NEW] System bell randomly doesn't work after login

[Graeme Hewson]

Public bug reported:

In KDE System Settings / Accessibility I have "Use system bell" ticked.
I have commented out the entry for pcspkr in
/etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf.

I can get a beep from the PC speaker using xterm and entering, for
instance, ^G, or backspace, or "echo -e '\a'". (Konsole, of course,
usually doesn't use the system bell.)

However, quite often after logging in to a KDE session, whether or not
that's immediately after booting, the beep doesn't work, and the only
way to restore it is to go to Accessibility settings, untick "Use system
bell", click Apply, re-tick "Use system bell" and click Apply again.

The problem doesn't seem to be just some corrupted KDE setting, because
it can happen if I use a test account and before logging in to KDE, use
a TTY session to delete .kde/ or even everything in the home directory
(using "cd; find . -delete). If I do this, sometimes the speaker works
(which it should, since this is the default setting), and sometimes it
doesn't. I can't find a pattern.

Once the speaker is working in a session, though, it continues to work.
The problem only happens around login.

This happens with Kubuntu 13.10 and 12.04.3 LTS. The problem is confined
to Kubuntu – it doesn't occur in other distributions I've tried:

Debian Testing with kernel 3.11.2 and KDE 4.11.3
OpenSUSE 13.1 (KDE 4.11.2)
PC-BSD 9.2 (KDE 4.10.5)

I tried using KDM instead of LightDM for 13.10, though 12.04 uses KDM
anyway. No difference.

Always, even when the bell isn't working, "xset q" shows:
  bell percent:  50    bell pitch:  400    bell duration:  100

I haven't seen any relevant messages in .xsession-errors. I can't see
anything related to system bell or PC speaker in KDebugDialog.

** Affects: kde-runtime (Ubuntu)
     Importance: Undecided
         Status: New

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1254527

Title:
  System bell randomly doesn't work after login

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