Re: Ding doing nothing

[Marcin Borkowski]

On 2015-01-09, at 22:47, Bob Proulx <bob@proulx.com> wrote:

> Marcin Borkowski wrote:
>> Well, it does not...  Maybe I should just live with it (and turn the
>> "visual bell" on).
>
> There are a lot of reasons why the tty bell might not ring on modern
> computer systems.  Sven already noted that it uses the PC speaker.
> Usually that has really harsh binary output audio suitable only for
> very limited noise making.  A lot of modern computers don't even have
> a PC speaker these days.  It is considered obsolescent hardware having
> been replaced by a sound card with speakers.  On several of my
> computers there isn't any PC speaker present.  Therefore on those
> systems there can't be a traditional tty bell that rings through the
> PC speaker.
>
> In addition to the older Linux kernel module pcspkr there is a newer
> module that uses snd_pcsp.  On my system in order to prevent the tty
> bell I have to blacklist both of those kernel modules.
>
> On my Debian Sid system the tty bell is routed through the sound card
> speakers.  This uses ALSA.  There is an alsa mixer control for Beep.
> In the alsa control it may be muted or unmuted.  Try looking for that
> control.
>
>   amixer scontrols
>   amixer get Beep
>   amixer set Beep 50% unmute
>
> It is possible that you have PulseAudio installed which will override
> all of the audio controls.  I won't say anything more other than on my
> system in order to get a working sound system I need to remove PA.  YMMV.
>
> So first I would really check that your system has the hardware
> capability for ringing the terminal bell.  It might not.
>
> On a system with a working terminal bell the following will ring the
> bell in a simple and automatable way.  It basically emits ASCII
> character 7 the BEL character.  In Emacs every C-g (control-g is the
> ascii 0x7 BEL character) rings the bell.  But this can be done in a
> loop while testing and debugging.
>
>   printf "\a"
>   while sleep 1; do printf "Ding! \a\n"; done
>
> As for looking at the bell configuration if you are running X then
> check 'xset q' for bell information.  It might be disabled in X.
> On my system:
>
>   $ xset q | grep bell
>     bell percent:  50    bell pitch:  400    bell duration:  100
>
> You mentioned visual bell.  If you are using screen then it also
> interprets the BEL character too.  If you are using ssh to a remote
> system and screen there then it is still the local terminal that
> handles the tty bell, if it receives the ASCII BEL 7 character.
>
> I have seen BIOS configurations that allow for enabling and disabling
> the PC Speaker.
>
> There are so many ways for it to be blocked that it is hard to have a
> single cookbook way of controlling every possibilty.  All I can do is
> suggest to get to the lowest level available for debugging and then to
> wish you good luck.
>
> Good Luck!
> Bob

Thanks for your input!

Somehow it started to work.  Strange.

Anyway, would it be a good idea to redefine (ding) to e.g. fire aplay
with some wav file?  I mean: would this work?  I guess that if some code
invokes (ding), it would; but what if that code is byte-compiled, for
instance?  Should it then be compiled again?

Best,

-- 
Marcin Borkowski
http://octd.wmi.amu.edu.pl/en/Marcin_Borkowski
Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science
Adam Mickiewicz University