Beep in shell script not working?

Question

i'd like to use a beep sound in a shell script. Unfortunately none the methods i found via google does work for me.

i tried

echo -e '\a'

echo -ne '\007'

and the command beep after i installed it via apt.

What could be the reason?

Answer 1

First run sudo modprobe pcspkr and then beep should work.

The reason this doesn't is because by default Ubuntu no longer loads the hardware driver that produce beeps.

If this works for you then to enable the loading of pcspkr permanently edit the /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf file (using gksudo gedit perhaps) and comment out line that says blacklist pcspkr so it looks like this:

# ugly and loud noise, getting on everyone's nerves; this should be done by a
# nice pulseaudio bing (Ubuntu: #77010)
# blacklist pcspkr

Answer 2

Not being a fan of the pcspkr beep, I use a beep from one of the system sounds with the installed pulseaudio server's paplay command.

First find a sound you like (you can browse /usr/share/sounds for some available ones for example) and create a reference to it

export BEEP=/usr/share/sounds/KDE-Im-Message-In.ogg

Then have have it available as a command

alias beep='paplay $BEEP'

Now just run beep whenever you need it. For example, to alert you when a command is finished:

find . | grep treasure ; beep

Answer 3

As far as I can tell, this is a bug.

Answer 4

If you have actual speakers connected to the computer and you're not getting a beep it's likely because you are using compiz. Compiz is relying on pulseaudio catching the beeps and playing them while metacity bypasses the usual setup and uses libcanberra to play a beep sound. If it works with metacity and not compiz that is your problem, otherwise the answer htorque gave is corrent.