A little while ago I was having an annoying problem, and was able to fix it by blacklisting the pcspkr module. This seemed to be more of a workaround than a fix, though, and I was left wondering why I hadn’t had this problem before I tried openSUSE.
I think part of the answer may be that many distros have already solved this problem. A quick Google search revealed articles on disabling it for distros from Fedora to Gentoo, and there’s even a popular Ubuntu brainstorm idea that suggests having this module blacklisted by default.
Why not do the same with openSUSE? I know this isn’t the formal venue for requesting new features, but I wanted to see if anyone else has had to blacklist this module, and to gauge some level of support for disabling it by default.
A little while ago I was having an [annoying problem](https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=698148), and was able to fix it by blacklisting the pcspkr module. This seemed to be more of a workaround than a fix, though, and I was left wondering why I hadn't had this problem before I tried openSUSE.
I think part of the answer may be that many distros have already solved this problem. A quick Google search revealed articles on disabling it for distros from Fedora to Gentoo, and there’s even a popular Ubuntu brainstorm idea that suggests having this module blacklisted by default.
Why not do the same with openSUSE? I know this isn’t the formal venue for requesting new features, but I wanted to see if anyone else has had to blacklist this module, and to gauge some level of support for disabling it by default.
I don’t know, but this issue is not seen much here in the openSUSE forums. I suggest that the reason no fix has been put forward is because:
The kernel module pcspkr does not cause trouble to a lot of people.
The kernel module pcspkr is loaded as a backup should the sound driver fail to load.
It is easy to disable this module should it need to be disabled.
That does not mean you can’t create an openFate request and put your idea up for a vote as a future change, but it does not seem to be all that pressing an issue as I see it. None the less I wish you luck in your quest.
How is pcspkr used as a sound driver? The computer’s internal speaker is nowhere near good enough to emulate regular sounds. If someone has actually gotten it to do anything more than beep loudly, I’d be interested to hear it.
As for not causing a lot of trouble with people, I’m not sure why others aren’t affected by it. On both computers that I’ve installed openSUSE (my laptop and desktop), it would always beep loudly on shutdown until I disabled it.
I don’t think “leaving it as a backup sound device” justifies the annoyance of having your computer yell at you every time you shut down or restart. I think it would be easier to blacklist it by default, and then anyone who wants to actually use it can remove it from the blacklist.
Maybe I should just move this over to openFate. =)
How is pcspkr used as a sound driver? The computer’s internal speaker is nowhere near good enough to emulate regular sounds. If someone has actually gotten it to do anything more than beep loudly, I’d be interested to hear it.
As for not causing a lot of trouble with people, I’m not sure why others aren’t affected by it. On both computers that I’ve installed openSUSE (my laptop and desktop), it would always beep loudly on shutdown until I disabled it.
I don’t think “leaving it as a backup sound device” justifies the annoyance of having your computer yell at you every time you shut down or restart. I think it would be easier to blacklist it by default, and then anyone who wants to actually use it can remove it from the blacklist.
Maybe I should just move this over to openFate. =)
Indeed the internal speaker driver is nothing more that a beeper. It is more of an error alert device than anything else, but it may be better than silence. In any event you did the right thing with your openFATE request and good luck with that.
I’ve never heard it used as an error beep. The only times I hear it are a) shutting down, or b) in runlevel 3 when an operation fails, like trying to delete a character that isn’t there.
So does anyone find pcspkr actually useful? It makes more sense if you boot directly into a terminal, but as part of a desktop environment it serves absolutely no purpose. If someone would like to tell me a time when they found it useful, by all means share it, because I’m very confused about why this shouldn’t simply be disabled.
I agree. Opensuse Loading the pcspkr is simply a wrong choice, which annoys users. Most ordinary users are not capable of disabling a kernel module. The irritating beep gives opensuse a bad reception amongst ordinary people.
And I’m growing tired of disabling it.
Consider if we never had the beep, and it was introduced today. How many people would want it? It overrides any other audio settings and is effectively unmutable and EXTREMELY annoying.
Somebody please tell me how to commit the blacklisting of pcspkr to opensuse trunk.
> As for not causing a lot of trouble with people, I’m not sure why
> others aren’t affected by it. On both computers that I’ve installed
> openSUSE (my laptop and desktop), it would always beep loudly on
> shutdown until I disabled it.
Is it only on shutdown, the cure is
/etc/sysconfig/shutdown:
HALT_SOUND=“no”
and if it doesn’t work, report the bug in bugzilla
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 11.4 x86_64 “Celadon” at Telcontar)
On 2011-08-24 20:16, kog13 wrote:
>
> How is pcspkr used as a sound driver? The computer’s internal speaker is
> nowhere near good enough to emulate regular sounds. If someone has
> actually gotten it to do anything more than beep loudly, I’d be
> interested to hear it.
On 2012-01-26 12:26, tazly wrote:
>
> I agree. Opensuse Loading the pcspkr is simply a wrong choice, which
> annoys users. Most ordinary users are not capable of disabling a kernel
> module. The irritating beep gives opensuse a bad reception amongst
> ordinary people.
it doesn’t annoy me at all.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 11.4 x86_64 “Celadon” at Telcontar)
