Re: PC speaker beeps in 2.6.30?

[Paul Vojta <vojta@math.berkeley.edu>]

On Sun, Jun 28, 2009 at 01:09:26PM +0200, Kurt J. Bosch wrote:
> On 2009-06-28 10:38, Takashi Iwai wrote:
> > At Sat, 27 Jun 2009 23:39:08 -0700,
> > Paul Vojta wrote:
> >>
> >> On Sat, Jun 27, 2009 at 09:36:42AM +0200, Takashi Iwai wrote:
> >>> At Fri, 26 Jun 2009 10:03:54 +0400,
> >>> Michael Tokarev wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>> [Adding some more Cc's...]
> >>>>
> >>>> Am I the only concerned about this?  My 2.6.30 is still
> >>>> silent w.r.t. old good PC speaker beeps, and I wasn't
> >>>> able to make it to produce any sound.  Yes, as pointed
> >>>> out by others there is a control now, in alsa, and I
> >>>> can hear ugly and scary beeps from my stereo speakers
> >>>> (when they're turned on and when the control is un-muted).
> >>>> But that's.. not a solution/answer to the original
> >>>> question... ;)
> >>>
> >>> Try 2.6.31-rc1.  There was a fix regarding beep frequency.
> >>
> >> Not necessarily.  Based on the OP's original post, as well as his mails
> >> to the LKML (Google the subject line to find them), he has a desktop
> >> system with external powered speakers connected to a sound card, and also
> >> a small PC speaker inside the system case.  He wants to hear the beeps
> >> coming out of the small speaker, since the external speakers (and/or sound
> >> card) are not always turned on.
> >
> > To avoid someone misunderstanding: the beep routed through HD-audio
> > can also go to the built-in speaker.  It's just mixed up with the
> > normal audio output, and the volume is controlled via ALSA mixer
> > volume element.
> >
> > But, once after it's hooked up to the codec, the beep can't be output
> > separately to the speaker.  It's always with other audio signal to the
> > same output target.
> >
> > Or, on some systems (mostly laptops), the beep is hooked up to the
> > codec automatically no matter whether you set
> > CONFIG_SND_HDA_INPUT_BEEP once when the codec chip is initialized.
> > So, the behavior depends pretty much on the hardware implementation.
> >
> I face the same problem as the OP since kernel 2.6.30 on ArchLinux on
> a desktop machine. I was able to get beep working through the built in
> speaker again by doing a 'modprobe -r pcspkr' followed by a
> 'modprobe pcspkr' after sysinit. It seems there is some kind of
> struggle goinig on here between alsa and pcspkr. Isn't there any
> kernel line or modules configuration option to disable the alsa pc-beep?

Hm... apparently not.  Probably there should be a module option for this, though.

--Paul Vojta, vojta@math.berkeley.edu