Beep beep beep!

[g4bkf]

Hi all

Having decided to educate myself with Linux, I installed Debian and began to experiment. With the help from subscribers to this forum, I have managed to set up most of my system as I want it. However, there is one feature which is driving me to distraction.

My Linux box emits a quiet, rapid series of three short beeps every four or five minutes. I have no sound card set up yet so I assume the sound is coming from the PC speaker. I also assume it is some kind of reminder that it is switched on? The beeps are there whether or not GDM is running.

Having trawled through numerous help files, I still have the beeps nagging away.

Can anyone help?

[Giles]

This isn't idea doesn't stop the beeps, but is a temporary fix which will at least stop you hearing them (so hopefully stop them driving you mad )

Open a terminal
Type

alsamixer

use the right arrow to move through the volume bars until you select the one marked "PC Speak"
Press "m" to mute that channel
Press [Escape] to exit alsamixer

As I say, this isn't really a long-term solution (apart from anything else, it stops you hearing any other warnings through the PC speaker), but it should make life a bit easier while you look for a real answer

HTH
Toodle-oo
Giles

[bigtomrodney]

How is all of the hardware on your machine? This could be anything from overheating to as you said a reminder. I would definitely look into this further...

[g4bkf]

Hi Giles

Thanks for the advice. Unfortunately, when typing alsamixer into a terminal window, the command is not recognised.

This isn't idea doesn't stop the beeps, but is a temporary fix which will at least stop you hearing them (so hopefully stop them driving you mad )

Open a terminal
Type

alsamixer

use the right arrow to move through the volume bars until you select the one marked "PC Speak"
Press "m" to mute that channel
Press [Escape] to exit alsamixer

As I say, this isn't really a long-term solution (apart from anything else, it stops you hearing any other warnings through the PC speaker), but it should make life a bit easier while you look for a real answer

HTH
Toodle-oo
Giles

[TheBigPhish]

did this sound come from the box when the 'other' os was on it? It sounds hardware based.

[g4bkf]

No.

It only occurs when either:

gdm is stopped or

(when gdm is running) the screen has blanked out after a period of inactivity

There was no problem under windows

Tom

did this sound come from the box when the 'other' os was on it? It sounds hardware based.

[Giles]

Hi Giles

Thanks for the advice. Unfortunately, when typing alsamixer into a terminal window, the command is not recognised.

Ok - it was only a temporary solution, as I said.

I find alsamixer quite useful, so it might be worth installing it at some point (it's in the alsa-utils package I think), but I don't know the standard process for installing stuff in debian (is it apt-get? I can never remember which package manager goes with which distro ), so I wont try to give exact instructions...

Toodle-oo
Giles

[eraker]

You should probably figure out the source of the beeps, but they just be little notices tied to various things. I found this site the other day that I thought was interesting:
Removing annoying console beeps