[Linux-users] System Bell/Notification

[James McDonald]

Lonni J Friedman wrote:
> 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.
>
>   
I remember KDE Control Center had the option to turn "System Bell" 
routing through the speakers on and off. Find out how it does it and 
duplicate the change perhaps?