Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 160172
Why isn't PC speaker enabled by default?
Last modified: 2015-01-04 17:20:07 EST
I can't believe that there isn't already a bug about this, but I searched for both "speaker" and "pcspkr" and couldn't find one. When I install Fedora Core from scratch and log into X, the X server doesn't beep. Why doesn't it beep? Because the PC Speaker module ("pcspkr") hasn't been loaded. I have to put "modprobe pcspkr" in /etc/rc.d/rc.local to get beeps to work. Is there some reason why it doesn't get loaded automatically? Am I missing something? Thanks.
There's not a mechanism for automatically matching the pcspkr driver to hardware to load it automatically. Frankly, I think it should be built in in such a case.
If we do that, I give it a week before someone files a bug "Why isn't the PC speaker driver built as a module, its really irritating". One compromise could be to have the /etc/modprobe.conf always contain it on installs. For those that don't want it, they only have to remove that one line then instead of having to rebuild their kernel.
I don't see what you could put in modprobe.conf to get it to automatically load - am I missing something?
hmm. no idea. *cough* rc.sysinit *cough* :-) seriously, I don't know how we can 'fix' this.
It seems to me that if there is no config file in Fedora Core one can use to specify modules which should be probed automatically on reboot, the obvious answer is to add such a config file and support for it in the boot scripts.
/etc/sysconfig/modules/*.modules are sources in rc.sysinit on boot...
Then why can't we stick something there to load the speaker module?
See Dave's comment #2. If we ship a file that does that, then someone would have to edit/remove it, and then you'd run into issues on upgrade. (It could be marked %config, but then you'd have people sourcing a file every boot that does nothing.) This might be revisited with moving to udev to load modules.
*** Bug 179739 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
(In reply to comment #2) > If we do that, I give it a week before someone files a bug > "Why isn't the PC speaker driver built as a module, its really irritating". I think that's a much weaker case to make than the non-working state of the PC speaker. If there's any case at all. All operating systems use the PC speaker. All Linux distributions that I'm aware of do the same. Sans Fedora. Yet nobody files any bugs against them for that reason. Why would Fedora be different? Compile it in the kernel and let's be done with it. I don't think there's any situation where it could create any problem - again, based on the fact that this feature is built into pretty much all other OSes and distributions by default and nobody seems to complain about that. This bug cripples the functionality of applications such as X-Chat, gdm, xterm (and other terminals), etc. Let's squish it once for all.
*** Bug 196614 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
A new kernel update has been released (Version: 2.6.18-1.2200.fc5) based upon a new upstream kernel release. Please retest against this new kernel, as a large number of patches go into each upstream release, possibly including changes that may address this problem. This bug has been placed in NEEDINFO state. Due to the large volume of inactive bugs in bugzilla, if this bug is still in this state in two weeks time, it will be closed. Should this bug still be relevant after this period, the reporter can reopen the bug at any time. Any other users on the Cc: list of this bug can request that the bug be reopened by adding a comment to the bug. In the last few updates, some users upgrading from FC4->FC5 have reported that installing a kernel update has left their systems unbootable. If you have been affected by this problem please check you only have one version of device-mapper & lvm2 installed. See bug 207474 for further details. If this bug is a problem preventing you from installing the release this version is filed against, please see bug 169613. If this bug has been fixed, but you are now experiencing a different problem, please file a separate bug for the new problem. Thank you.
With Fedora Core 5 32 bit version, on a Dell Latitude D600 laptop, the new kernel 2.6.18-1.2200.fc5 has fixed the bug. The pcspkr module appears to load all by itself, without help from a /etc/sysconfig/modules script. The PC speaker beeps at the appropriate times. Works For Me. Thank you, your effort in squishing this very old bug is much appreciated.