Question: The [ping manual](http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/maverick/en/man8/ping.8.html) says that `ping -a` will generate audible pings, but when I try this no sound is made.

What am I doing wrong?

Answer: 
From looking at the source, ping produces a bell by printing the ASCII bell char '\a', which is doing nothing, probably because the system beep is disabled.

You can manually try to produce the bell with:

```
echo -e "\a"

```
In my case, audible bell was disabled because of `xset -b` in my ~/.xsession file and could be re-enabled with `xset b`.