Bell sound alert on bash shell giving me the prompt

stephaneeybert · 01-29-2012, 06:21 AM

Hello,

I'm a user of bash and I'd like to set it up so that it rings the bell every time a command terminates, successfully or not, and hands me the prompt again.

This would wake me up :-) And I would not have to stare at the screen, ruining my eyes.

Think of all of us who could then close their eye lids for some 3 to 30 seconds, rest their eye sight and brain...

Any way this very usefull little utility can be done ?

Kind Regards,

Stephane

neonsignal · 01-29-2012, 07:25 AM

Just set the command prompt to have a bell in it ('\a' or '\007'), for example:

Code:

PS1='\u@\h:\w\$\a '

You can set this in a local profile file, eg .bash_profile or similar.

stephaneeybert · 01-29-2012, 07:52 AM

I did this:

stephane@stephane-ThinkPad-X60:~> PS1='\u@\h:\w\$\a '
stephane@stephane-ThinkPad-X60:~$ sleep 6
stephane@stephane-ThinkPad-X60:~$

But it did not beep after the sleep command was done.

I'd like to have a beep after the shell hands me the prompt over. On any commands.

neonsignal · 01-29-2012, 08:13 AM

Does the following bash command beep?

Code:

printf '\a'

If not, the system bell might be disabled. You could check the volume controls, and also try the following:

Code:

xset b 50
printf '\a'

If the system bell is working, even just pressing backspace at the shell prompt should elicit a beep.

stephaneeybert · 01-29-2012, 08:30 AM

The command:

printf '\a'

does ring the bell and I hear it every time.

But if I type in the command:

sleep 3

and then wait, I never hear the bell after the command is done and I get the prompt again.

Having a bell ring every time any command terminates would allow me to do something else, instead of waiting for the command to terminate.

catkin · 01-29-2012, 10:29 AM

This might work

Code:

PROMPT_COMMAND="printf '\a'"

lisle2011 · 01-29-2012, 12:27 PM

Here is a link to ringing the terminal bell in just about every computer language - not useful but interesting.
http://rosettacode.org/wiki/Terminal..._terminal_bell

other wise try this:

'very long process' && echo -e "\a"

should ring the bell, however the caveat is that the bell must be enabled and if it is not all you will see is a blank newline and then your prompt.

Test it beforehand:

your prompt % echo -e "\a" and smash enter

If all you get is a space the bell is disabled, non-existent or broken. I am certain you could figure out some other way to alert yourself when a process has finished using a script. This is for you to discover.

There are more than a million hits on any search engine resolving the bell ringing issue.

Bon chance mon ami.

lisle2011 · 01-29-2012, 12:31 PM

An alternative would be to use a process that sends a message to every terminal and interrupts what you are doing there. Perhaps you should try a script to schedule these long processes and forget them until later, that is what computers are really good at, doing stuff by themselves.

stephaneeybert · 01-29-2012, 03:34 PM

Thanks all for your comments !

This one worked good

PROMPT_COMMAND="printf '\a'"

but it rings the bell on every return key strike :-)

I guess for now I'll put this aside and try to come up with a solution that would ring the bell only when scripts taking more than 3 seconds terminate.

That'd be nice.

catkin · 01-30-2012, 02:32 AM

Then you could run them via a front end script, something like

Code:

#!/bin/bash

start_time=$( date '+%s' )
"$@"
rc=$?
end_time=$( date '+%s' )
(( (end_time - start_time) > 3 )) && printf '\a'
exit $rc

stephaneeybert · 01-30-2012, 03:18 AM

Thanks ! I shall try it asap..

motoservo · 09-01-2015, 04:58 AM

This is an old thread but just stumbled on it while looking up the meta for a system sound. I've answered here for whoever else needs to know and finds this page.

Chain the echo command whenever you want the alert (with a command you think might last awhile):

Code:

$sleep 4; echo -e "\007"

That way, the sound command doesn't start until the previous finishes.

You can also shorten the echo part to just a z (for sleep) with an alias by adding something like this to your .bash_profile

Code:

alias z='echo -e "\007"

Code:

sleep 4; z

Hope this helps.

Troy Dalmasso