BEEP(1)                     General Commands Manual                    BEEP(1)



NAME
       beep - beep the pc speaker any number of ways

SYNOPSIS
       beep  [--verbose | --debug] [-e device | --device device] [-f N] [-l N]
       [-r N] [-d N] [-D N] [-s] [-c]

       beep [ OPTIONS ] [-n] [--new] [ OPTIONS ]

       beep [-h] [--help]

       beep [-v] [-V] [--version]

DESCRIPTION
       beep allows the user to control the pc-speaker with precision, allowing
       different  sounds  to  indicate  different events.  While it can be run
       quite happily on the command line, it's intended place of residence  is
       within  shell/perl scripts, notifying the user when something interest-
       ing occurs.  Of course, it has no notion  of  what's  interesting,  but
       it's real good at that notifying part.

       All  options  have default values, meaning that just typing 'beep' will
       work.  If an option is specified more than once on  the  command  line,
       subsequent  options  override  their  predecessors.  So 'beep -f 200 -f
       300' will beep at 300Hz.

OPTIONS
       --verbose, --debug
              enable debug output. This option prints a line like the  follow-
              ing before each beep:

              [DEBUG]  5 times 200 ms beeps (100 delay between, 0 delay after)
              @ 1000.00 Hz

       -e device, --device device
              use device as event device. If the switch isn't used,  /dev/tty0
              and /dev/vc/0 are tried in turn.

       -f N   beep  at  N Hz, where 0 < N < 20000.  As a general ballpark, the
              regular terminal beep is around 750Hz.  N is not,  incidentally,
              restricted to whole numbers.

       -l N   beep for N milliseconds.

       -r N   specify the number of repetitions (defaults to 1).

       -d N, -D N
              specify  a  delay of N milliseconds between repetitions.  Use of
              -d specifies that this delay should only  occur  between  beeps,
              that  is,  it  should  not  occur after the last repetition.  -D
              indicates that the delay should occur  after  every  repetition,
              including  the last.  Normally, -d is what you want, but if, for
              example, you are stringing several  beep  commands  together  to
              play  the  star  wars  anthem,  you  may want control over every
              delay.

       -n, --new
              this option allows you to break the command line up into  speci-
              fying  multiple  beeps.   Each  time  this  option is used, beep
              starts treating all further arguments as though they were for  a
              new beep.  So for example:

              beep -f 1000 -n -f 2000 -n -f 1500

              would  produce  a sequence of three beeps, the first with a fre-
              quency of 1000Hz (and otherwise default values), then  a  second
              beep  with  a frequency of 2000Hz (again, with things like delay
              and reps being set to their defaults), then  a  third  beep,  at
              1500Hz.   This is different from specifying a -r value, since -r
              repeats the same beep multiple times, whereas -n allows  you  to
              specify  different  beeps.   After a -n, the new beep is created
              with all the default values, and any of these can  be  specified
              without altering values for preceding (or later) beeps.  See the
              EXAMPLES section if this managed to confuse you.

       -s, -c these options put beep into  input-processing  mode.   -s  tells
              beep  to  read  from  stdin, and beep after each newline, and -c
              tells it to do so after every character.   In  both  cases,  the
              program will also echo the input back out to stdout, which makes
              it easy to slip beep into a text-processing  pipeline,  see  the
              EXAMPLES section.

       -h, --help
              display usage info and exit

       -v, -V, --version
              display version information and exit

EXAMPLES
       At its simplest (yet still effective)

              beep

       A more interesting standalone setup

              beep -f 300.7 -r 2 -d 100 -l 400

       As part of a log-watching pipeline

              tail -f /var/log/xferlog | grep --line-buffered passwd | \
              beep -f 1000 -r 5 -s

       When  using -c mode, I recommend using a short -D, and a shorter -l, so
       that the beeps don't blur together.  Something like this will get you a
       cheesy 1970's style beep-as-you-type-each-letter effect

              cat file | beep -c -f 400 -D 50 -l 10


       A highly contrived example of -n/--new usage

              beep -f 1000 -r 2 -n -r 5 -l 10 --new

              will produce first two 1000Hz beeps, then 5 beeps at the default
              tone, but only 10ms long each, followed by a  third  beep  using
              all the default settings (since none are specified).

IOCTL WACKINESS
       Some  users will encounter a situation where beep dies with a complaint
       from ioctl().  The reason for this, as Peter Tirsek was nice enough  to
       point  out  to  me, stems from how the kernel handles beep's attempt to
       poke at (for non-programmers: ioctl is a  sort  of  catch-all  function
       that  lets  you  poke at things that have no other predefined poking-at
       mechanism) the tty, which is how it beeps.  The  short  story  is,  the
       kernel checks that either:

       - you are the superuser

       - you own the current tty

       What  this means is that root can always make beep work (to the best of
       my knowledge!), and that any local user can make beep work, BUT a  non-
       root  remote user cannot use beep in it's natural state.  What's worse,
       an xterm, or other x-session counts, as far as the kernel is concerned,
       as  'remote', so beep won't work from a non-privileged xterm either.  I
       had originally chalked this up to a bug, but there's actually nothing I
       can  do  about  it,  and it really is a Good Thing that the kernel does
       things this way.  There is also a solution.

       By default beep is not installed with the suid bit  set,  because  that
       would  just  be  zany.  On the other hand, if you do make it suid root,
       all your problems with beep bailing on ioctl calls will magically  van-
       ish,  which  is  pleasant,  and the only reason not to is that any suid
       program is a potential  security  hole.   Conveniently,  beep  is  very
       short, so auditing it is pretty straightforward.

       Decide  for yourself, of course, but it looks safe to me - there's only
       one buffer and fgets doesn't let it overflow,  there's  only  one  file
       opening, and while there is a potential race condition there, it's with
       /dev/console.  If someone can exploit this race by replacing  /dev/con-
       sole, you've got bigger problems.  :)

       So  the  quick,  only,  and likely safe solution if beep is not beeping
       when you want it to is (as root):

       # chmod 4755 /usr/bin/beep

       (or wherever you put it)

       The one snag is that this will give any little nitwit  the  ability  to
       run  beep successfully - make sure this is what you want.  If it isn't,
       a slightly more complex fix would be something like:

       # chgrp beep /usr/bin/beep

       # chmod 4750 /usr/bin/beep


       and then add only beep-worthy users to the 'beep' group.

FREQUENCY TABLE
       Several people have asked for some basic help translating  music  notes
       to  frequencies.   There  are  a lot of music notes, and several tables
       online will give you translations, but here are approximate numbers for
       the octave of middle C, to get you started.

       Note      Frequency
       C         261.6
       C#        277.2
       D         293.7
       D#        311.1
       E         329.6
       F         349.2
       F#        370.0
       G         392.0
       G#        415.3
       A         440.0
       A#        466.2
       B         493.9
       C         523.2

BUGS
       None that I'm aware of, though see the IOCTL WACKINESS section.

REPORTING BUGS
       Report bugs to <johnath@johnath.com>

AUTHOR
       This program was written by Johnathan Nightingale (johnath@johnath.com)
       and is distributed under the GNU General Public License.  For more con-
       tributing  information,  check the source, and past contributors can be
       found in CREDITS.










                                   July 2008                           BEEP(1)
