Startup questions

Forum: Other Help Topics
Topic: Startup questions
started by: dylanrogers

Posted by dylanrogers on June 10 2005,02:58

How do I stop the initial 2 boot-beeps when I boot DSL? My speakers on my laptop are REAL loud, so its disrupting when Im programming at night in my dorm room.

Also, how do I stop Dillo from opening @ startup?

Posted by green on June 10 2005,03:44

in the file called .xinitrc which you will find at /home/dsl you need to edit the line that starts with "dillo /usr/share......" by placing a # in front of the word "dillo"

i have no clue about that beep.

EDIT: i added the word 'no' in front of clue.

Posted by dylanrogers on June 10 2005,04:59

Emelfm tells me that /home/dsl/.xinitrc does not exist. What do I do?

Posted by friedgold on June 10 2005,11:50

It does exist - it's just hidden (any files starting with a . are hidden in Linux). Press the H button next to the path at the top in emelfm to show hidden files.

Posted by Guest on June 10 2005,15:27

Two boot beeps are usually emitted by laptops with pcmcia ethernet cards when these cards are detected at bootup. The beeps are also emitted at shutdown.

The hardcore-geek way for solving this problem would be to edit that module that gets loaded for the pcmcia card. On the other hand, you can just put your hand to cover the speakers at this stage of the boot-up.

Posted by green on June 10 2005,15:54

you could plug in headphones ?

Posted by dylanrogers on June 11 2005,02:33

How do I edit the modules file under DSL to stop the beeps?

Posted by Guest on June 11 2005,04:41

So you decided that you qualify for the "hardcore-geek" category, eh? Okay, then first you should confirm that you hear the two beeps when you see the message "PCMCIA found, starting cardmgr." If yes, then the beeps were emitted inside the script /etc/init.d/knoppix-autoconfig. Specifically, it should be within this section of the script

Code Sample

modprobe pcmcia_core >/dev/null 2>&1
modprobe yenta_socket >/dev/null 2>&1 || modprobe i82365 >/dev/null 2>&1 || modprobe tcic >/dev/null 2>&1
if [ "$?" = "0" ]; then
echo " ${GREEN}PCMCIA found, starting cardmgr.${NORMAL}"
modprobe ds >/dev/null 2>&1
cardmgr >/dev/null 2>&1 && sleep 4

So you see that there are 5 modules being probed before the program "cardmgr" is called. Better add cardmgr as a suspect, too. You have to narrow down your suspects by adding "echo" and "sleep" commands strategically inside this script. Then remaster the DSL iso with the new /KNOPPIX/KNOPPIX file containing this edited knoppix-autoconfig script. Monitor very carefully where the two beeps occur.

Once you have the suspect pinned down, you need to get the source code for that module, search its guts for anything that says printf() or putc() or whatever that involves the BELL character 0x07. Remove them, recompile the modules, put them inside the KNOPPIX/KNOPPIX file, and remaster the DSL iso.

So you think you can handle it from here, eh?

Posted by dylanrogers on June 11 2005,12:03

OK.....could you do that for me? lol i know its kinda hard to ask someone on a >> forum << to edit a PCMCIA module for someone, but i would sincerely appreciate it.

also, if i am left to do this myself, couldn't i just reboot? i don't have to make another CD ISO do i?

i dont know where to add the sleep things to make it NOT beep.

Posted by dylanrogers on June 11 2005,12:06

OK i was looking at the code, found

fi
fi

at the end of that code sample you gave me. are those the beeps?

Posted by mikshaw on June 11 2005,13:51

"fi" simply closes an "if" statement. If you're looking for a bell in a shell script it would be something like this: echo -e "\a"

I'd say that recompiling a module just to get rid of a couple of beeps is massive overkill. Try disconnecting the system speaker instead.
Or add something like this to the beginning of the startup script mentioned above:
setterm -term linux -blength 0 > /dev/tty1

How often is the system speaker useful? Personally I have never needed it once the machine gets through POST.

Posted by dylanrogers on June 11 2005,19:01

I appreciate the help, but I've already switched the BeatrIX. It's now my primary OS. Thanks for all the help everyone has given me in my time in these forums. ;)

Visit my blog @ www.binaryopinion.com

Posted by RoGuE_StreaK on June 12 2005,03:34

I know it's too late, but wouldn't BeatrIX still beep? I know that Windows ME beeps as well... think it's a fairly standard part of an OS, a notification that it has found a PCMCIA card.
Of course, depending on what you use the card for, you could always try just taking it out. Not much help if it's network or something...