Beep Beep!

[DrJ]

I usually use FreeBSD with a sound card, but there still were system sounds (like beeps) that were transmitted by the case loudspeaker. Well, my current box has no case speaker, and while I could add one, it seems silly when there is a much better audio system attached.

How do I redirect system audio to the sound card?

To be clear, there are no issues with audio playback of any sort, including sounds from Gnome (such as they are).

[jb_daefo]

no time to check, but I would investigate /yell/ and /beep/ (in /audio/)

[DrJ]

Sorry, but you have to be a bit less cryptic for me to understand your comment.

[indiocolifa]

I simply turn off the TCSH shell beep with

set nobell

[DrJ]

Ahem. The bell is off because there is no case speaker. I wish to turn it *on*.

[jb_daefo]

maybe the ports /yell/ or /beep/ can output to a sound card? ""
Is what I meant.

[BSDfan666]

Originally Posted by DrJ

Ahem. The bell is off because there is no case speaker. I wish to turn it *on*.

The problem is that the PC speaker is handled independently of the audio framework..

I did find an old discussion on the FreeBSD mailing list, and a kernel patch designed to redirect console beep events to a special daemon.

The link posted in the reply to that question was moved here.

It's for FreeBSD 4x.. not sure of any viable solution for newer versions of FreeBSD. (..or {Open,Net}BSD)

Hope that helps, apologies for not being able to find something newer..

[TerryP]

the audio/yell program just opens /dev/speaker and writes stuff out to it; as far as I know the speaker(4) driver is for the PC's system beeper (which DrJ is missing). I'm not sure about audio/beep but the description sounds like the same thing.


Although I honestly don't know how you could stand that darn thing DrJ, I can only think of 2 ways to do what you want.

0. make programs use the sound system instead of the PCs speaker thing; for example setting stuff to call `mplayer sndbite.ogg` to emit the beep.

1. find out how the system interfaces with the speaker (I assume by reading the speaker drivers source code), and replace it with a compatible interface that instead invokes the sound card or sound system software (e.g. esd) in place of the PC hardware; that may have to be custom coded if no one else has made one publicly available, and I don't know of anyone who has.


my advice: if you want something like vi to beep, and don't feel like touching C code to work around it -- just stick in the hardware (I assume you could do it easily, circumstances permitting).

[DrJ]

Originally Posted by TerryP

my advice: if you want something like vi to beep, and don't feel like touching C code to work around it -- just stick in the hardware (I assume you could do it easily, circumstances permitting).

Yes, it is mainly for vi, and I don't like setting the screen to flash (yuck!). The hardware is a few bucks and not hard to do, but I really hate to add hardware to solve a seemingly simple software problem. If it is this involved, well, then the few bucks and a bit of silicon adhesive is the better route.