[Linux-users] System Bell/Notification

[Lonni J Friedman]

On 8/30/07, Bill Campbell <linux-sxs at celestial.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 30, 2007, C M Reinehr wrote:
> >I'm having what, at first appearance, is a simple problem, but one that
> >doesn't seem to have a simple answer--at least not one that I've been able to
> >find and simple answers are my specialty. ;-)
> >
> >Last week I completed a completely new installation of Debian Etch (stable) on
> >a desktop PC. A critical application is rxvt, a terminal emulation program,
> >which allows the user to connect to our accounting system which is written to
> >use simple, dumb terminals for I/O. An important feature is the use of the
> >system bell to notify the user of important events (of an accounting nature).
> >
> >Well, everything on this new PC works, except the system bell. We use KDE and
> >get all of the usual sounds when logged into a user session. KDE has a system
> >of notifications which causes different sounds to be played to notify the
> >user of different events and they work. All the other usual suspects work,
> >mplayer, flash plugin, etc. Just not the system bell notification.
> >
> ...
> >So, anybody got a clue? If not, my next resort will just be to carefully
> >reinstall the whole damned system.
>
> What happens if you send a ctrl-g character to the terminal?
> This is the BEL ascii character which should generate a beep.
>
> Most of the times I've had problems hearing beeps on my desktop
> system it's been because I have all sound going through the
> speakers and had the volume turned way down.

Indeed, on most recent distros the bell gets routed through the audio
subsystem, and is no longer sent to the mobo speaker.

-- 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
L. Friedman                                    netllama at gmail.com
LlamaLand                       http://netllama.linux-sxs.org