How do you figure out how to do something when you have no idea what search terms to use? This is something I always seem to have with GNU/Linux problems. I don’t know what it is – the highly specialised jargon? The fact that the answers are in badly indexed forum threads and mailing lists? Or, maybe Google is the wrong tool – I can imagine less popular topics get swamped in all the “make money online” buzz. Do GNU/Linux discussions get any PageRank at all?
Anyway, my Google search history brings up this silly example to illustrate my point:
which really can get annoying, you know. The items I clicked through to were this blog post and this forum thread. Neither appeared as top results, but at least on the first page. Interestingly, the latter doesn’t show up on the first page anymore now (a couple of days later) – man, how does that Google machinery work? I don’t get it.
A side note: that blog post refers to a bug report about this beeping problem, which amused me in some ways. Interesting enough for a whole philosophical post about the goals of major distros… or something like that.
Back on topic: I felt I hadn’t found any reliable information. Ripping the pcspkr module out is not exactly the elegant solution you’d hope for. And everyone in those two discussions suggested different fixes. So I tried again:
which pretty much gives you the same results, this time on top. Somewhat lower on the page I noticed a real guide. Sounds more reliable, doesn’t it? It’s advice, however: “… This moves the driver from its proper location to root’s home directory – moving it is a safer bet than just deleting it just in case you want it back.” Again, that can’t be right. Crippling the whole system by removing access to the hardware? So I gave up and went to bed.
Next day I decided the bug report could be a good lead. Instead of looking in my Google history to find back the bug report page, I thought I’d be quick by searching for
Or, well, whatever the reason was, that’s what my search history now tells me I looked up then. It also tells me that I clicked through to ArsGeek’s item about it. Can you believe it? Another proponent of the “blacklist your pcspkr module” solution. At the time, I decided to just type “xset b off” in the console, as the last poster in the forum thread above suggested – that silenced both the unnecessary auto-completion bells in the xterminal, and the Iceweasel Find-command bell… at least until the next login. I didn’t want to make this permanent yet, hoping for a more fine grained solution (basically, turning the bell off for the whole X session makes you deaf to real problems too, I think).
Today it occurred to me that I keep calling this a “beep”, whereas some people in the links above speak of a “bell”. In fact, the xset man page also calls it that. And thus:
finally giving me a page from a site I usually trust: Debian Administration (and yes, that post title says “beeps” but the required search query had to have “bells”…). So I guess I’ll stick with the xset advice. Still, it doesn’t feel like the optimal solution…
What’s my point, you ask? I’m not sure. Stuff like this is not something you find on a man page if you use the wrong search terms. Yet I generally prefer official documentation over anything else, and rarely ask in a forum (is that the real fault?). I want solutions that don’t feel like just a fast hack.
Apologies if I sound frustrated tonight. Actually, I’d love to hear how you gather information. I’ll be grateful for any tips.
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