SDB:Firefox started beeping

From openSUSE

Situation

After online update your Firefox started beeping. This gets pretty annoying, while visiting sites rich in JavaScript and ActiveX components.

Note: This is now solved via another online update on Oct 9th in the meantime. -Msmeissn

Solution

Right click on Firefox icon -> Properties -> Application. Go to the command field, and replace firefox with

( /usr/bin/firefox 2>&1  ) > /dev/null

Put the line above if you don't care what the output of firefox is. If you do, put there

( /usr/bin/firefox 2>&1  ) > ~/.FirefoxMsgs

... and enjoy the messages stored in your home directory in .FirefoxMsgs file.

Explanation

Your Firefox has been updated to a version with very verbose mode compiled into it. It's verbose output is written to a console/tty from which Firefox was executed. If you execute Firefox from a Konsole window, you shall observe a bunch of information given.

Among ASCII characters in text messages written there, you can also find \x07 ASCII bytes. 0x07 represents '\a' character, what means a system bell. If an ASCII "\0x07" or "\a" byte is written into a tty console, it behaves the same way as system bell (command "beep").

You can experience this problem if you execute "startx" from a console, instead of using XDM which is default, because startx output is written to a /dev/tty?, where startx was executed.

Solution 2

You can also turn off the "beep" sound system wide by editing:

 /etc/inputrc

using your favorite text editor (vi, pico, mcedit..) and add:

 set bell-style none

Additionally create a file:

 touch /etc/bash.bashrc.local

and add the following:

 setterm -blength 0

Explanation 2

"bell-style none" will turn off "bell" for tab competition, "setterm -blength 0" will do the trick for all terminals, that read the /etc/bash.bashrc.

If you want to hear a "bell" for other errors use solution 1.

Have a lot of fun.