Beep
Beep is an advanced PC speaker beeping program. It is useful for situations where no sound card and/or speakers are available, and simple audio notification is desired.
Contents
Installation
Configuration
Access for non-root users
By default beep
will fail if not run by the root. Other users may call it using sudo. To let group users
call sudo beep
without a password (for example to use it in scripts), /etc/sudoers
should be edited:
%users ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: /usr/bin/beep
or, to let only a single user do that:
username ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: /usr/bin/beep
Another way is setting the sticky bit on /usr/bin/beep
:
# chmod 4755 /usr/bin/beep
Note however that this way anyone can execute /usr/bin/beep
with root permissions. The change also creates a difference between local copy and the package, which will be reported by pacman -Qkk
.
Unmuting in alsamixer
You should also unmute the Beep channel using alsamixer
.
$ alsamixer
You may need to press F6
and select your card. scroll to the Beep channel using the arrow keys and press M
to unmute the channel. notice that the "MM" label below the channel will change to "00". you can also use ↑
to increase the volume of the channel.
Press Esc
to close alsamixer.
You can also save your settings to ALSA Mixer to make it permanent:
# alsactl -f /var/lib/alsa/asound.state store
Tips and Tricks
While many people are happy with the traditional beep sound, some may like to change its properties a bit. The following example plays slighly higher and shorter sound and repeats it two times.
# beep -f 5000 -l 50 -r 2