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

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.