Turn off (mute or disable) system beep on Fedora CoreOS Live by default

[eriksjolund]

This is a feature request.
On an HP Elitebook 850 G6 laptop, I did the following

1. Boot up fedora-coreos-32.20200601.3.0-live.x86_64.iso from a USB stick.
2. Wait until this text is shown on the monitor

[core@localhost ~]$ 

3. Press backspace

What happened: A loud system beep is heard.
What I would have wanted: Silence

(I work in an office landscape and would like not to disturb my colleagues)

Probably there are multiple ways of how to achieve silence, but one workaround is:

[core@localhost ~]$ sudo rmmod snd_pcsp

or use ignition with

storage:
  files:
- path: /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-snd_spcp.conf
  mode: 0644
  contents:
    inline: |
      blacklist snd_pcsp

as discussed here:

https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/t/how-to-disable-mute-system-beeps-on-fedora-coreos-live/21606

Output of rpm-ostree status

[core@localhost ~]$ rpm-ostree status
                   Version: 32.20200601.3.0 (2020-06-16T08:52:21Z)
                    Commit: b51037798e93e5aae5123633fb596c80ddf30302b5110b0581900dbc5b2f0d24
              GPGSignature: Valid signature by 97A1AE57C3A2372CCA3A4ABA6C13026D12C944D0
[core@localhost ~]$ 

[dustymabe]

We discussed this in the meeting today. Before we take any action here we'd really like to find out why the current behavior is the default in Fedora, or if it is even desired to be the default in Fedora. The goal here is that we don't customize every little thing and eventually end up with something that is harder to manage.

Anybody want to look into why the setting is currently that way and figure out if it is the intended default or not? If it is the intended default we might be able to change it in Fedora unless there is good reason for it.

[nasirhm]

Thank you @eriksjolund for reporting about it, After looking into the issue a bit from Linux's context, It's a Kernel module: pcspkr that Interacts with the PC speaker for situations where no sound card or speakers are available and a simple audio notification is desired.

But in the case of snd_pcsp It's an attempt to use this very limited hardware to produce full PCM sound. It appears as an ALSA device and after doing some research alot of people have turned it off for similar reasons.

I'll currently be looking at how much it can effect Fedora and if there is anything that depends on this module.