up vote 65 down vote favorite
34

I'd like to use a beep sound in a shell script. Unfortunately none of the methods I found via Google 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?

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See this bug report: bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/unity/+bug/769314 – Flimm Dec 2 '14 at 23:58
    
superuser.com/questions/47564/… || unix.stackexchange.com/questions/1974/… || stackoverflow.com/questions/10313939/… – Ciro Santilli 华涌低端人口 六四事件 法轮功 Sep 30 '15 at 14:52
up vote 72 down vote accepted

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
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2  
If I comment blacklist pcspkr I have to do modprobe -r pcspkr && modprobe pcspkr to get it to work. Also getting beep to work is not the same as getting the audible bell to work and thus askubuntu.com/questions/22168/how-do-i-enable-the-terminal-b‌​ell should still be open. – daithib8 Jul 28 '11 at 11:37
1  
This doesn't work for me in Ubuntu 14. – Cerin Apr 4 '16 at 23:41
up vote 72 down vote

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/ubuntu/ringtones/Harmonics.ogg

Then 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
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Very cool! It works! – Hengjie Feb 19 '13 at 3:22
    
This wasn't the answer I expected, but I like it better. – isaaclw Jun 20 '13 at 16:55
    
Can you get it to play this sound when someone runs echo -e '\a' – Flimm Dec 2 '14 at 23:22
1  
This is a great solution! Now I can do run-my-long-test-suite.sh; beep and read stackoverflow until the system is ready. – jamesc Mar 30 '15 at 10:17
3  
Nice! I use export BEEP=/usr/share/sounds/ubuntu/stereo/dialog-information.ogg and alias beep='paplay $BEEP --volume=32768' now, that works well for me. (Note that you can override the volume with the beep alias, e.g. beep --volume=15000 plays at volume of -12dB.) – leftaroundabout Dec 6 '15 at 12:57
up vote 21 down vote

To fix this problem persistently:

  • Run gconf-editor and if the desktop | gnome | peripherals | keyboard | bell_mode setting is present then change it from off to on
  • Run dconf-editor and if the org | gnome | settings-daemon | peripherals | keyboard | bell-mode setting is present then change it from off to on
  • Add pactl upload-sample /usr/share/sounds/gnome/default/alerts/glass.ogg bell.ogg to the file ~/.xprofile (you need gnome-control-center-data for glass.ogg)
  • Add [ "$DISPLAY" ] && xset b 100 to the file ~/.bashrc

The simplest way to activate this solution is to reboot.

Further, to implement this solution immediately for a terminal window that is already open, run the pactl command and run the xset command in the terminal window in question.

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I put the pactl upload-sample command in a shell script, but your method is more organized. Thanks! – JoBu1324 Dec 12 '12 at 16:54
    
If you put the pactl command in ~/.xprofile it gets executed at the start of the GUI session. – jdthood Dec 12 '12 at 18:32
    
The dconf-editor version of the bell-mode setting seems to be org.gnome.settings-daemon.peripherals.keyboard. – lgarzo Jun 21 '13 at 8:59
    
@lgarzo: Thanks for the tip. I will update the answer. – jdthood Jun 21 '13 at 9:22
1  
@Hibou57: Make sure you have the package containing glass.ogg installed – Janus Troelsen Nov 16 '14 at 13:44
up vote 14 down vote

Since this is a very high rated question on google, I'll add the steps I did to re-enable beep in both console and X11:

For the Linux Console (CTRL+ALT+F1...F6):

Why it does not work by default

As already answered, the pcspkr kernel driver for the PC Speaker is blacklisted in Ubuntu.

Temporarily enable until reboot:

sudo modprobe pcspkr

Automatically enable on boot:

sudo nano /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf

(delete or comment pcspkr line by prepending it with #)

For X11 terminals (such as the default gnome-terminal)

Why it does not work by default

Under X, like when using Unity, KDE, Gnome Shell, the beep events are captured by PulseAudio thanks to module-x11-bell, which is loaded by default at /usr/bin/start-pulseaudio-x11. And the sound sample PulseAudio plays on beep, bell.ogg, is blank by default. Additionally, the bell volume may be muted.

To temporarily enable for current session,

xset b 100  # perhaps not needed, on my system it was 40 by default
pactl upload-sample /usr/share/sounds/ubuntu/stereo/bell.ogg bell.ogg

There are other suitable samples you can try at /usr/share/sounds, for example check the ones at /usr/share/sounds/gnome/default/alerts/

Note that the beep program is not really necessary. But if installed, it uses the PC Speaker. It was the only way I could find to enable the buzzer under X:

sudo apt-get install beep

To automatically enable on boot, just add the above lines in your ~/.profile, or system-wide at /etc/profile

To test it:

printf '\a'

Beep!

beep

Buzz!

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To automatically enable a pc speaker beep on boot you have to actually comment said line in /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf not uncomment it (you want to disable blacklisting, not the other way around). – o'rety Sep 16 '16 at 11:18
    
@o'rety: thanks, I've edited it! :) – MestreLion Oct 5 '16 at 7:14
    
both solutions work on Ubuntu 16.04 Note: pcspkr and bell.ogg are independent approaches. beep tries to beep using various approaches e.g., ioctl(console_fd, KIOCSOUND, period) use pcspkr (the sound is coming from PC speaker on the motherboard) while printf '\a' -based method may work without it using only bell.ogg (the sound is from ordinary speakers). The second method might not work until pulseaudio service is started and/or xset b on is run – jfs Oct 13 '16 at 0:43
    
The pactl upload-sample ... was golden for me. What's the way to permanently configure the sample loading again? – ulidtko Nov 29 '16 at 22:15
    
@ulidtko: Just add those lines lines in your ~/.profile, or system-wide at /etc/profile – MestreLion Feb 6 '17 at 15:40
up vote 7 down vote

I've encountered this problem before. From what I remember, the problem is that the terminal bell tries to ring an internal computer speaker (as in an old-school desktop) but laptops and some newer computers are missing such a thing.

The only solution I found at the time was to sudo apt-get install sox and

play -n synth <duration in seconds> sine <freq in hz> vol <volume (0-1)>

e.g.

 play -n synth 0.1 sine 800 vol 0.5
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try my solution - I'd love to know if it works for you! – JoBu1324 Dec 11 '12 at 23:10
    
you may use speaker-test for this too – Janus Troelsen Jun 11 '14 at 9:05
up vote 2 down vote

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.

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up vote 2 down vote

As far as I can tell, this is a bug: System beep broken in Karmic despite heroic efforts to fix it.

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"Not enabled by default" does not mean broken, and no "heroic effort" is needed: just modprobe pcsprk (in console) or pactl upload-sample ... in X11 and the annoying beep is back :) – MestreLion Feb 19 '15 at 11:03
up vote 2 down vote

I finally found a solution, which doesn't require alsamixer to have a PC Beep option. I think I remember all my changes:

uncomment the following in /etc/pulse/default.pa:

load-sample-lazy x11-bell /usr/share/sounds/ubuntu/stereo/bell.ogg
load-module module-x11-bell sample=bell-windowing-system

per this bug, run pactl upload-sample /usr/share/sounds/ubuntu/stereo/bell.ogg bell.ogg

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Tried this, pactl gave me Connection failure: Connection refused pa_context_connect() failed: Connection refused. – YodaDaCoda Dec 11 '12 at 23:33
    
Maybe this thread will help - if you've ever run pulseaudio as root. – JoBu1324 Dec 11 '12 at 23:49
    
I'm having a different problem, actually. Pulseaudio throws Failed to open module "module-esound-protocol-unix": file not found. Probably not worth discussing here since I'm running 13.04, though I would love to be able to verify your solution. – YodaDaCoda Dec 12 '12 at 0:05
    
Nice, just slightly different lines for 15.04. – VRR Sep 12 '15 at 11:09

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