PApalmfacehn·Jan 10, 2024
In I pwned half of America's fast food chains simultaneouslyjohnath
beep
C2016–2024
johnath / beep
beep
beep is a command line tool for linux that beeps the PC speaker
8Distinct people
8Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
193GitHub stars
What to know before exploring
What it is
beep is a command line tool for linux that beeps the PC speaker
GitHub
Where it is used
No documented product use has been verified yet.
What people are saying
No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.
No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.
Also in these discussions
No other repository is repeatedly linked in the same discussions.
This week on Hacker News
Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 1:49:46 PM UTC.
No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.
Mentions over time
HN mentions by year8 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2016-08-04 14:18:11 UTC to 2024-01-10 09:19:47 UTC.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016 | 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| 2017 | 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2018 | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 6 | 0 | 6 |
| 2019 | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2020 | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2021 | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2022 | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2023 | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2024 | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
What Hacker News says
8 sourcesYeah, that makes sense. I took the liberty of pasting this comment to the upstream bug tracker:
https://github.com/johnath/beep/issues/11#issuecomment-37886...
In Beep security update(N.B.: I'm on the Debian ftpmaster team, which reviews all new software in Debian to ensure it matches our policies and commitments)
> Does GPL say anything about distributing source via git repositories?
Nope.
> I mean, it talks about "preferred form of the work for making modifications".
This is generally interpreted as a fancy way of saying "source code" — e.g. a minified JavaScript program or something that could be decompiled isn't the "preferred form… for making modifications".
Source for all Debian packages can be retrieved via `apt-get source PACKAGE`, and via sources.debian.org[3].
Historically, the only hard requirement was that all patches be made available as a `.diff.gz` applied against the upstream, although for many years packages have since standardised on using `quilt`[2]. Some maintainers may also use git (and wrappers
Read the rest
around it) to make things easier to manage, but quilt is sufficiently straightforward to work with that it's acceptable for most purposes.
The VCS page on the BTS points to the repository for the package. It contains an unreleased version (1.3.3-5), the security update only is a patch on the previous version released in Debian.
The last upstream release was 1.3 (2010), available on GitHub[1]. This is a Debian-specific patch against beep. We'd like all patches to make it upstream, and ensure maximum clarity, but we have limited time, and our first priority is the users of Debian. Sometimes, upstreams lose time, or there are coordination issues that prevent it. (not saying that's the case here)
[1]: http://github.com/johnath/beep/
[2]: https://wiki.debian.org/UsingQuilt
[3]: https://sources.debian.org/src/beep/unstable/
Is it worrisome that the Debian distribution comes with a package with this note in the README
Decide for yourself, of course, but it looks safe to me -
there's only one buffer and fgets doesn't let it overflow,
there's only one file opening, and while there is a
potential race condition there, it's with /dev/console.
If someone can exploit this race by replacing /dev/console,
you've got bigger problems. :)
It also appears /dev/console is overridable, https://github.com/johnath/beep/blob/master/beep.c#L149.
In Beep security updateFrom the beep readme:
By default beep is not installed with the suid bit set, because that would just be zany. On the other hand, if you do make it suid root, all your problems with beep bailing on ioctl calls will magically vanish, which is pleasant, and the only reason not to is that any suid program is a potential security hole. Conveniently, beep is very short, so auditing it is pretty straightforward.
https://github.com/johnath/beep
In Beep security updateSee the "A note about ioctl" section of the README: https://github.com/johnath/beep
In Beep security updateBeep: command line tool for linux that beeps the PC speaker
3 points · Open discussion