How to disable bell on SSH connections

networknotwork

@gertjan yes, the new Windows Terminal has that option too but the old Windows Console Host (conhost) doesn’t.

johnpoz

@networknotwork not sure what your using/doing then... Because I tested this by opening a cmd prompt in windows 10, ssh to pfsense and heard the bell you were talking about when I just just backspace at the prompt. Or when I did a tab autocomplete..

I then created the .inputrc and no more bell. After I re ssh'd in..

networknotwork

@johnpoz yep did that, but will try again. Are you using the Windows built in ssh (bundled starting with 1809 I think) or another ssh client?

johnpoz

@networknotwork hold - you might be right ;) stupid me was hitting enter not backspace..

doh! Well shit! ;)

sorry about that - need more coffee I guess ;)

johnpoz

@networknotwork ok I think I got it ;)

in your .tcshrc file at the end add

set nobeep

this seems to have done it.

tested with ssh that is part of windows

C:\>ver

Microsoft Windows [Version 10.0.19044.1415]

C:\>ssh -V
OpenSSH_for_Windows_8.1p1, LibreSSL 3.0.2

Or if you like your file to be a bit cleaner looking in the area where its setting prompt and stuff you could add the nobeep

networknotwork

@johnpoz not at my PC but this sounds right, so dang difficult to find stuff specific for tcsh/FreeBSD, just get a deluge of bash/Linux hits…I literally googled (well, DDG’ed) “disable tcsh bell” and didn’t find this.

johnpoz

@networknotwork btw, I tested this with ssh from openssh for windows as well, and it still works - since its related to the shell (tcsh)

C:\>ssh -V
OpenSSH_8.8p1, OpenSSL 1.1.1l  24 Aug 2021

Not sure why the windows built in ssh is so far behind..

Just got a fancy new PC, and still working on getting all the stuff back to the way I like it.. Upon testing this and seeing that the windows version ssh that comes with was so far behind it was time to correct that ;) I normally just use securecrt for my ssh needs, but now and then you need to do stuff from just the command line

Gertjan

@networknotwork said in How to disable bell on SSH connections:

difficult to find stuff specific for tcsh/FreeBSD

It's here https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?tcsh(1).

I've been looking for the beep one myself quiet often, and was thrown of track because what the first line in /etc/passws says : your shell is /bin/sh

But ... when 'root' (or 'admin') logs in, /bin/sh uses /root/.profile that will kick of /etc/rc.initial. rc.initial shows the 'asccii pfsense' menu.
Option 8 of this script will kick of another shell, this time /bin/tcsh

Btw : files like /root/.tcshrc will get overwritten what updating / upgrading and maybe during other circumstances.

johnpoz

@gertjan said in How to disable bell on SSH connections:

files like /root/.tcshrc will get overwritten what updating / upgrading and maybe during other circumstances.

quite true.. so need to keep that in mind going forward.

networknotwork

@johnpoz maybe you guys should just add this to the default .tcshrc :-) I doubt anyone likes the bell!

networknotwork

@gertjan I think /bin/sh in passwd is there for some weird compatibility/historical reasons; it’s usually symlinked to another shell like tcsh/bash in the file system, I don’t think any distro still uses the original sh; the default on FreeBSD is tcsh

johnpoz

@networknotwork said in How to disable bell on SSH connections:

I doubt anyone likes the bell!

hehehe - you never know ;) But sure you could put in a feature request to have that as an option you could turn off or on in the gui..

They have it where you can turn off the bootup/shutdown beep

I would think they could add a option where you configure ssh access to disable that beep ;)

Gertjan

@networknotwork said in How to disable bell on SSH connections:

I don’t think any distro still uses the original sh

Think again.

dump /bin/sh yourself.
The binary will ID itself to you.
It no sym link.

It's 'sh'.

networknotwork

@johnpoz is there a feature request/bug report board? Couldn't find one. Anway, while editing .tcshrc I found a bug: it checks for $term == "xterm" to set key bindings, it should be $term =~ "xterm" to account for xterm-256color etc.

Command line editing wasn't working properly before I made this change, inserting appeared like it was overwriting (not pushing rest of line to the right as I typed) but was actually inserting my typed chars into the line.

networknotwork

@gertjan yeah, pfsense is the exception that proves the rule!

johnpoz

@networknotwork you can create a feature request over on https://redmine.pfsense.org/

And if you found a bug/issue or improvement in the .tcshrc you could put that in there as well.

edit: This has been a enlightening thread to be sure.. I learned a bit about making sure your actually awake when testing something ;) and also about the stupid bell thing hehe, and got me to update my local ssh client too.