how to disable system beep

[Cameron Simpson]

On 16Dec2007 14:26, Nigel Henry <cave.dnb at tiscali.fr> wrote:
| If you mean the annoying beep when the login screen comes up, I've just fixed 
| that by adding the following to /etc/modprobe.conf on F8.
| 
| install pcspkr /bin/true
| 
| See the man page for true. It's a bit sparce, but gives you the general idea.

"man 1p true" is less spartan, but true and false are commands with
pretty simple semantics:-)

In the good old days, /bin/true was simply an executable _empty_ file.
A shell would thus invoke a shell to run it, which found an empty script
and succeeded trivially.

A bit later I examined it on a SunOS4 system (I think). It was a file
consisting of a big fat copyright notice. And no code or other content.
So, some bloat.

Later still, on an AIX system, I examined it. It was an executable.
Bleah:-(

On Linux its and executable too. I know this is fractionally faster
than loading a shell to run it (though in the Old Days a shell was a
much tinier thing too). But it still makes me feel... ill. And since
true and false are built in to most shells, the /bin/true executable
would rarely be used anyway.

I suspect the real reason these days is that /bin/true must be
a general purpose executable - anything must be able to exec() it, not
just a shell. So the smallest this you could probably do is this:

  #!/bin/sh

I will return you to your mainline beep discussion now...

BTW, is it possible to disable the PC speaker but _not_ disable the
headphones? That would be pretty desirable to me.

And, under F8, has PulseAudio finally worked around the "browser-with
Flash has stolen my audio device" problem?

Cheers,
-- 
Cameron Simpson <cs at zip.com.au> DoD#743
http://www.cskk.ezoshosting.com/cs/

This calls for a really stupid and futile gesture.      - Strayhorn