Defaults and behaviour of PC Speaker in future Ubuntu *Server* releases

[Daniel Chen]

Daniel Chen writes:
>> Fortunately, one can reenable the beep driver at
>> runtime via a sysfs echo.

On Sun, Sep 12, 2010 at 12:15 PM, Akkana Peck <akkana at shallowsky.com> wrote:
> Could you elaborate on that? I'm not having much luck googling,
> just a few people saying they couldn't find a command that worked.

Noting that my above statement refers specifically to HDA beep, please
see bug 582350 as pertains to Maverick.  The sysfs bit is
/sys/module/snd_hda_intel/parameters/beep_mode.

Also note that the entire beep maze is both hardware- and
configuration-dependent.


> The lack of beep is definitely specific to Ubuntu kernels.

I haven't done due diligence regarding inspecting kernel configs for
other popular modern desktop distros, so I don't know offhand if their
values match Ubuntu's.  I also don't know if others blacklist
identical kernel modules.


> If I build my own kernel.org kernel, beeps work fine; but Ubuntu
> kernels, even with the pcspkr module loaded, mostly don't beep.

Are you using an identical kernel configuration?  What are the
remaining details of the test environment?

I have a feeling this discussion is beyond the scope of this thread,
so please feel free to continue it on the kernel-team or
ubuntu-audio-dev mailing list.


> I'd love to see a reliable/scriptable way of enabling pcspkr,
> as I'm sure would the other people commenting in the various bug
> reports. Bug 486154, especially, is full of suggestions on elaborate
> workarounds that work for some people but not for others.

Right, this is due to hardware and configuration maze (hence the
effort to unify it in 2.6.35+).

Best,
-Dan