CentOS / Red Hat / Fedora Linux Turn off Beep / Bell Terminal Sound

Posted on in Categories , , last updated March 20, 2008

Q. I’m using CentOS Linux v5.x and I’d like to turn off the bell sound. How do turn off the beep?

A. Linux kernel has PC speaker beeper driver called pcspkr.ko. This driver is responsible for generating beeps while working at shell prompt / x terminal. To turn off the beep, simply remove driver from kernel. You also need to black list this driver so that it will not get loaded automatically.

Remove pcspkr driver

Login as the root user

Type the following command to unload the driver:
# rmmod -v pcspkr
Sample output:

rmmod pcspkr, wait=no

/etc/modprobe.d/blacklist file

Open /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist file:
# vi /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist
You need to append a module here prevents the hotplug scripts from loading it:
blacklist pcspkr
Save and close the file. Alternatively, you can unload driver by appending following line into /etc/rc.d/rc.local:
# vi /etc/rc.d/rc.local
Append following line:
/sbin/rmmod pcspkr
Save and close the file. There are other ways to turn off beep sound under Linux, if you don’t have root level access.

Posted by: Vivek Gite

The author is the creator of nixCraft and a seasoned sysadmin, DevOps engineer, and a trainer for the Linux operating system/Unix shell scripting. Get the latest tutorials on SysAdmin, Linux/Unix and open source topics via RSS/XML feed or weekly email newsletter.

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9 comment

  1. I think that removing the speaker driver is too strong an option. If the problem is that the terminal beeps at the bash prompt (I’m thinking about the user pressing TAB, with too many options you get a beep), it would be enough the following

    $ echo “set bell-style none” > $HOME/.inputrc

    After you open a new X terminal, it doesn’t beep

  2. Thank you nixcraft, I basically camp the “reset mysql root password” page for cut and paste purposes, now the prompt doesn’t beep over pandora radio woo!

  3. How to dissable pcspeaker in SUSE linux?
    There is no pcskpr module!
    I don’t want to do it via KDE, GNOME,… but in system way. Also I don’t want to dissable it only in console, but at all (in kernel or HAL). Is there some HAL way?

    Many thanks

  6. I have to agree with Miguel in the case where users are complaining about beeps at the bash prompt. For one thing, I can tell my users to google “bell-style” and empower them to resolve the issue :-)

    Thanks for both the original post and the comments, good to know both approaches.

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