I installed F17 on a system and I cannot make the PC speaker work as the X "bell". This worked fine in F16. I commented out the snd_pcsp line in /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf, loaded the module, and restarted X. I am running the XFCE desktop. I then used "xset b on" and "xset b 100 523 75" to configure the X server bell. I tried xterm, XFCE's Terminal (with the "hidden" option to enable beeps set), and xkbbell, but none will make a beep. I know the X server knows how to beep because "xkbbell -force" does indeed beep (this XkbForceBell() instead of just XkbBell()).
I find it mind-numbing that this hasn't been fixed yet. I can run "beep" as root and it works, but if I run it as myself it fails. (Permission denied on /dev/console. And an ioctl error if I manually change perms on /dev/console to allow all users access.) And, similar to the original ticket owner, I can run xkbbell and it fails unless I run with -force. I see a README.fedora as part of the "beep" package that suggests that this problem has been known awhile (the file's date is January 12th, 2012!!) I know this is pretty archaic stuff as notifications go, but some of us very much rely upon it. It's making me regret upgrading from F16 to F17. And in 5 months of this ticket being open, it hasn't even been assigned? Seriously... if I didn't need to run RHEL for my work, I'd be looking at other distributions. I know it's a minor thing, but it's stuff like this which has end users looking to other distributions. I mean if we can't even make the console beep... Let me know if I can aid in testing in any way. And yes I'm sure pcspkr is loaded (as mentioned, running as root works.) Thanks.
what's the output of xkbset q?
Well, huzzah! I didn't know about xkbset - I only knew about xset. Running "xkbset b" enabled the (disabled) audible bell, and all of a sudden I'm back to desired operation. I'm glad the fix (at least for me) was trivially easy - I just had no idea such a tool existed. (And I don't see the package in Fedora 16.) So... a bit disappointing that the "default" changed (and I had no way of knowing I had to look in a new direction) but fabulous that it's a fast and easy change. (My .xsession just grew by one command - and that's completely acceptable.) Thanks for your help (and well placed question,) Peter. I wonder if this will help the original post-er, Chris. Thanks again, Adam
Closing as NOTABUG, this is a configuration issue. Not sure why this would've changed though, this code hasn't moved much in ages. I wonder if the desktop environment is enabling/disabling XKB features.
I had been using xset to enable and adjust the bell, and that worked in F16/XFCE. When I switched to F17/XFCE, it quit working (no error, just no bell). Using xkbset to enable the bell works. Hurray for progress...