Wed May 16 12:42:15 EEST 2012

How to disable PC Speaker on FreeBSD / Mute PC-Speaker on BSD kernels

After finding out How PC Speaker is muted on Linux , I've decided to also disable the annoying beeps on BSD. This is in tandem with the minimalistic philosophy I try to apply to every server I manage.

Also on BSD Desktop machines it is quite annoying especially if csh (C Shell) is used, everytime you press TAB you get the beep sound. On BSD beep sound produced on tab completion is louder than in Linux and that makes it even more annoying ...

Disabling pc-speaker beeps on BSDs is done via a sysctl kernel variable:

freebsd# sysctl hw.syscons.bell=0 hw.syscons.bell: 0 -> 0


To further permanently disable on system boot add hw.syscons.bell=0 to /etc/sysctl.conf, e.g.:

freebsd# echo 'hw.syscons.bell=0' >> /etc/sysctl.conf