Getting rid of the terminal bell in Ubuntu
Posted by: Ross Del Duca in Debian/{*}Ubuntu Diversions...
So, this was driving me nuts. I was getting constant beeps (terminal bell) from my shell work. Most notably, it was from tab completion on command lines, or my nasty habit of hitting <ESC> at least twice in vi to get out of insert mode. I had to make this top!
My previous experience told me to look at termcap files and the like. Nothing I tried would work. At the time I decided I’d had enough of the infernal beeping and wanted to do something about it, I was unfortuately without internet access. As a last “hail mary” effort, I issued a:
ross@peloton:~$ sudo grep -i bell /etc/* Password or swipe finger: /etc/inputrc:# do not bell on tab-completion /etc/inputrc:# set bell-style none /etc/inputrc:# set bell-style visible /etc/mime.types:application/vnd.wrq-hp3000-labelled /etc/pnm2ppa.conf:# "colorshear 0" (the default value) and the best pattern is labelled "-2", /etc/screenrc:# turn visual bell on /etc/screenrc:vbell on /etc/screenrc:vbell_msg " Wuff ---- Wuff!! " ross@peloton:~$
Woah - what’s that inputrc file?? (Note: If you’re wondering what the “…or swipe finger:” means, see my post on getting an IBM/Lenovo laptop fingerprint reader working.)
Sure enough, that turned out to be the hit. In my version of Ubuntu, it was as simple as uncommenting line 21 of /etc/inputrc, which read:
# set bell-style none
Changing that to
set bell-style none
meant that (after starting a new terminal session) all of the beeps were gone. WOOHOO!
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June 23rd, 2008 at 7:25 am
I had the same problem on a server without any sound card. Very Annoying!. I think I had the same result though with simply unchecking “Terminal Bell” in Edit -. Current profile and saving the profile. (for the gui spoiled :-)) good to know where it changes it though.