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I've just finished upgrading to Ubuntu Server 20.04.1 LTS, and so far, only one issue has come up: When run as user, the beep command returns

beep: Error: Could not open any device`.

Running sudo beep does not work, as expected. After a little bit of research, I have found that no beep group is existent on the system, as expected by the man page. I have tried reinstalling and reconfiguring without success.

To make things even stranger, beep works during boot via rc.local; at some point, however, it stops working and returns the error, thus breaking my rc.local-routine. Also, this command works just fine:

sudo env -u SUDO_GID -u SUDO_COMMAND -u SUDO_USER -u SUDO_UID beep

For clarification: I am running a headless home server that is not connected to any speakers; the simple noise-making-speaker is used for simple feedback during boot and if errors occur that require intervention. My setup used to work fine under Ubuntu Server 18.04 LTS.

Rohit Gupta
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senthor
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  • I don't know anything about `beep`, but the package description mentions `printf "\a"` ... so wondering if that works? – xiota Nov 03 '20 at 11:28
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    I get this error: `beep: Error: Set up permissions for the pcspkr evdev device file and run as non-root user instead.` – xiota Nov 03 '20 at 11:30
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    is pcspkr blacklisted in `/etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf` – nobody Nov 03 '20 at 12:39
  • @nobody: pcspkr is not blacklisted. `beep` does work during startup and via the command added above, so it's not a driver issue. @xiota: I guess it is a permissions issue, but I have now idea how to solve it… – senthor Nov 03 '20 at 14:19
  • Is your user in group audio server means no pulse audio I think. – nobody Nov 03 '20 at 18:02
  • alternative https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/1974/how-do-i-make-my-pc-speaker-beep paplay /usr/share/sounds/sound-icons/capital – pierrely Nov 13 '20 at 05:03

4 Answers4

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Adding my user to group input worked for me, ie:

sudo usermod -aG input $USER

The change isn't visible until you log in again (On Ubuntu, I had to restart, not just log out and back in, before a new shell would display the new group in the output of groups.) To see the change within one shell, open a new login shell:

su $USER -
Majal
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Justin Kerr Sheckler
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Bad solution:

I'm pretty sure this is a permissions issue, but I am not sure how to solve it. I tried creating udev files and groups according to the ArchLinux Wiki, but that wouldn't work.

Then, I changed permissions on the device itself:

sudo chmod 777 /dev/input/by-path/platform-pcspkr-event-spkr

While this does work, it's surely a bad idea to make devices just writeable for anyone.

senthor
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One solution suggested in the doc PERMISSIONS.md is to create a system group called 'beep' and then use ACLs to allow members of that group write access to the device.

$ addgroup --system beep

Then create a rule for udev, e.g.

/lib/udev/rules.d/90-pcspkr-beep.rules :

# Add write access to the PC speaker for the "beep" group
ACTION=="add", SUBSYSTEM=="input", ATTRS{name}=="PC Speaker", ENV{DEVNAME}!="", RUN+="/usr/bin/setfacl -m g:beep:w '$env{DEVNAME}'"

Then you should be able to add users to this group and they can write to the speaker:

$ usermod user_name -a -G beep

Of course the above will only work if you have ACLs turned on. If you can't or won't do that, they have a different suggestion for the udev rule:

# Give write access to the PC speaker only to the "beep" group
ACTION=="add", SUBSYSTEM=="input", ATTRS{name}=="PC Speaker", ENV{DEVNAME}!="", GROUP="beep", MODE="0620"

But this will remove the speaker from being written to by the default system group 'input'--adverse effects are probably negligible since this method is suggested in the documentation.

Angelo
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Making beep work has been a pain for several years. I ended up with this line of code, either as an alias in ~/.bash_aliases or in a script named... well, beep.

/usr/bin/aplay /usr/share/sounds/sound-icons/prompt.wav 2>/dev/null &

Feel free to choose your command-line player and sound.

Majal
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