System beeps every 2 seconds when a key is pushed

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#1

Hi.

We have a weird problem with two PC’s running SUSE 11.3. The built in PC speaker beeps every 2 seconds when you are typing.

One of the PC’s (an old celeron with intel graphics, 32 bit suse 11.3) has had this problem for at least a year but we don’t use the keyboard much. The other one is a Core i5 with nvidia graphics (suse 11.3 64 bit). This machine was fine until it was upgraded from suse 11.2 (with zypper dup).

It is like a torture and is driving us nuts. It only does this in X11 - text mode is fine. It’s probably something obvious but we are stumped. Any ideas anyone (other than disconnecting the speaker) ? Thanks.

#2

Could you tell me the upgrade process?

#3

Try this
Not sure if it will work

SUSE Paste

#4

Used yast to change all the repos to point to 11.3 rather than 11.2 versions then ‘zypper refresh’ then ‘zypper dup’.
This has worked fine on other machines.

#5

caf4926 - Thanks for your help but it made no difference.
Note that we get this problem with KDE but also other window managers (ICEWm for example).

#6

Try a new user account
See if it has the same problem, if it does, then I don’t know.
It shouldn’t happen that’s for sure.

FYI: I do new installs in preference to ‘dup’

#7

Adding a new user account does not help.
Interestingly, if I do ‘init 3’ then there are no beeps even if I then login as any user and ‘startx’…
Thanks.

#8

Do you have some a line referring to “Bell” or “Beep” in your etc/X11/xorg.conf or xorg.conf.d?

#9

Picture from inside my PC
The hardware solution :slight_smile:

#10

There is no line referring to ‘Beep’ or ‘Bell’ in the xorg config.
The Xorg log file has this :
58.809] (II) config/udev: Adding input device PC Speaker (/dev/input/event4)
58.809] (EE) No input driver/identifier specified (ignoring)
Which sounds odd to me as a speaker is an output device but then the PC which does not beep has this too.
For the moment, I am going to try the ‘hardware solution’ above as it looks like it will work…

#11

On 2011-02-23 11:36, djlegge wrote:
>
> Hi.
>
> We have a weird problem with two PC’s running SUSE 11.3. The built in
> PC speaker beeps every 2 seconds when you are typing.

Typing on all programs? It could be some auditive feedback. See if you are
using some kind of assistive technology.

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 11.2 x86_64 “Emerald” at Telcontar)

#12

Thanks.
Everything in ‘system settings - accessability’ is turned off. I tried turning the beeps on here then off again but still the problem remians. Good idea though…

#13

On 2011-02-23 15:36, djlegge wrote:
>
> Thanks.
> Everything in ‘system settings - accessability’ is turned off. I tried
> turning the beeps on here then off again but still the problem remians.
> Good idea though…

Try factory. If the problem remains, ask in the mail list, then bugzilla.

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 11.2 x86_64 “Emerald” at Telcontar)

#14

djlegge wrote:

>
> There is no line referring to ‘Beep’ or ‘Bell’ in the xorg config.
> The Xorg log file has this :
> 58.809] (II) config/udev: Adding input device PC Speaker
> (/dev/input/event4)
> 58.809] (EE) No input driver/identifier specified (ignoring)
> Which sounds odd to me as a speaker is an output device but then the
> PC which does not beep has this too.
> For the moment, I am going to try the ‘hardware solution’ above as it
> looks like it will work…

Have you tried Config Desktop → Hardware → Input Devices -->Keyboard
and see were the key click is set. Mine is all the way to left. You many
be hearing the key click, not really a Beep.

Hope this helps.

–
Russ
openSUSE 11.3 (2.6.34.7-0.7-default)|KDE 4.6.0 Release 377|
Intel core2duo 2.5 MHZ,|8GB DDR3|GeForce 8400GS
Nvidia 260.19.29|

#15

Are there any processes in runlevel 5 that are causing the system to act sluggish.

Run ps aux or top in a terminal window and see if there any processes that are eating up resources.

#16

Thanks for the answers.
The key click slider is all the way to the left and doesn’t seem to affect the beep.
top shows no processes using more than 0.4% CPU and the load average is practically 0.
There is one thing that does work :
modprobe -r pcspkr

#17

On 2011-02-24 16:36, djlegge wrote:

> There is one thing that does work :
> modprobe -r pcspkr

I wonder if there is a way to track who uses a module. :-?

A wild idea. If something is writing to a /dev/something that is the
speaker, it is possible to track who by using apparmour.

–
Cheers / Saludos,

Carlos E. R.
(from 11.2 x86_64 “Emerald” at Telcontar)