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alexcriss

Member

Registered: 2010-05-24

Posts: 121

[Solved] Random BEEPs through Sound-Card (pcspkr is not loaded)

Hi everybody,

I'm having a problem with random beeps. They happen without any logical reason (at least for me), usually five or seven in a row every two hours (though it doesn't seem periodic in time). They are routed through headphones, hence I think they are not produced by the laptop speakers, instead they come from the sound card. Some info on my system:

Installed recently (one week ago), never happened before with similar configurations.
DE: Gnome, without gnome-power-management
Audio: Alsa + Pulse
CPU: Intel Core i5 540M
Graphic: Nvidia, driver 256.53 (last version gives a black laptop LCD screen and is a no go for me)
Modules: pcspkr AND snd_pcsp are not loaded (listed with ! in rc.conf MODULES array)
Kernel: 2.6.35.8-ARCH
Audio: Using card 0 from

alessandro@alessandro-lappy:~$ aplay -l
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: Intel [HDA Intel], device 0: ALC275 Analog [ALC275 Analog]
  Subdevices: 0/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 3: NVIDIA HDMI [NVIDIA HDMI]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 7: NVIDIA HDMI [NVIDIA HDMI]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 8: NVIDIA HDMI [NVIDIA HDMI]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 9: NVIDIA HDMI [NVIDIA HDMI]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

I searched on Google but every post is related to pcspkr. I tried thinking about possible sources, like evolution alarms (don't seem to be the culprit), pulseaudio (they happen with pure alsa as well). Now I am out of educated guesses. I think they might be related to some sort of problems with CPU/GPU, I checked the GPU temperature and it is a reasonable 44 Celsius. I have never had this problem on my previous install (same Gnome, only difference was that I never used evolution activities, hence I removed them all now, doesn't help as stated above).

Is there any way to know what the hell in the world is producing these beeps, like some system log which tells me the last sound card use was made by XXX (I couldn't find anything useful in dmesg, daemon.log).

Thanks anybody, and if some other info are needed please let me know. Cheers,
Alessandro

Last edited by alexcriss (2010-11-15 13:50:22)

alexcriss

Member

Registered: 2010-05-24

Posts: 121

Re: [Solved] Random BEEPs through Sound-Card (pcspkr is not loaded)

NOT WORKING - I still have beeps: After many days of search I might have made it two minutes after posting: Systems sound were unmuted in Gnome audio setting (What an idiot I am!).

LAST EDIT: The culprit was a Google advert on the nvnews linux forum page, which I leave open to check some posts. I left the pulseaudio volume control window open and checked for applications making sounds. When the computer beeped the alsa chromium plugin was being used. I was using ad-block before reinstalling.

Some questions for the crowd. Is there any other way to check what is using the sound card, in the case that I do not have pulseaudio running (or in the case that I do not want to stare at the monitor waiting for a beep).
Is there something I can do to send to hell the advert developers for three days of beeps, logs reading, pulse reconfiguration, etc.?

PS I've left previous comments in this post, even though I do not think they will be useful to others.

Cheers, and sorry for the really big noise
Alessandro

Last edited by alexcriss (2010-11-15 13:50:08)