[Pkg-alsa-devel] Bug#540831: blacklisting pcspkr ruins beep(1), and icewm' mail beep

[Gerfried Fuchs]

	Hi!

 Thanks to jidanni to bringing this to my attention.

* Josh Triplett <josh at joshtriplett.org> [2009-09-03 04:15:52 CEST]:
> On Thu, Sep 03, 2009 at 09:23:25AM +0800, jidanni at jidanni.org wrote:
> > Blacklisting pcspkr ruins beep(1), and icewm' mail beep, and probably
> > other programs.
> > 
> > There should perhaps be a whiptail question saying what is being ruined
> > and what to do about it.
> > 
> > I don't know the official way one should fix it.
> > 
> > I could tamper with some blacklist, but that is not official.
> 
> This primarily seems like a bug in whatever alsa driver you use, for not
> taking over the function of the console beep (and thus routing it
> through the normal sound card, which allows muting, volume control, and
> various other niceties that pcspkr doesn't).

 The core functionality of beep _is_ to use the pcspkr. Having alsa-base
stumble upon other packages usefulness with some reasoning that I have a
hard time to follow -- the intention is clear but the outcome is a
horror to quite some other packages -- I really would request to revert
this change. Having some alsa drivers routing it through their own sound
system might be nice but it doesn't seem to work, e.g. people on powerpc
seem to have problems to get any beep at all, and blacklisting the
modules in no way helps with that.

> If you don't use an alsa driver, then uninstall alsa-base and the
> blacklist of pcspkr will go away.

 Sorry, but alsa-base breaks other application through that
blacklisting, which is a no-go.

> And if you want to keep alsa-base installed and still have pcspkr, just
> edit /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base-blacklist.conf and comment the "blacklist
> pcspkr" line.

 Why is this forced down the throat of users? How regular actually is
the question on how to disable the speaker? In fact, the speaker IMHO is
in no scope of the alsa-base area so it shouldn't address it. Having
some README.Debian entry about it might be reasonable, touching an area
that isn't alsa-bases is just wrong.

 Thanks,
Rhonda