make possible to mute sound on boot with a key combination

Why can't you just disable the startup sound through the login window's preferences dialog (Administration->Login Window) ?

I totally understand your point... Have you heard a mac start, have you heard a windows start, at the right moments it would be nice to hear an ubuntu system start.
1. Shows you stand out.
2. Makes the users feel proud they own an Ubuntu box.
3. Confirms that you really are login in. Reassuring.

But when a meeting is going on and you want to be a quite as possible, it would be nice to have a feature where I can hold cntr shift and disable login sounds.

that doesn't look like a gdm specific request, you will have the same problem with the login sound, etc

Here is the issue then... if gdm can't mute the sounds at boot who will?
Another fine usecase...
This morning, I was turning on my computer. Last night I had the music blaring, jsut in my headsets. Now the headsets are unplugged and when I boot POW! and my baby wakes up and starts crying.
And one more...
I was watching a move using totem. I set the volume to 100 percent then adjust the movie volume from within totem. When I computer shuts down I hear the loud noise... well that is ok, but what about the next morning when I turn on. What control do I have over the boot sound now? Now when I am at school and I first login, everyone in my quite class will hear it.

do you know how other OS like windows handle it? Do you expect gdm to not make sound or to mute the computer?

Windows has no feature for this. Infact... I think linux is the closed, as some sound cards have the ability to change the volume without being logged in.
I don't think Mac has a login sound but worse still, they have the "post" sound. Something I don't think can be disabled.
So I think this would be the first time something like this was implemented.

Confirming as a feature request. I've sent it upstream on http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=438707

I just installed Ubuntu 8.10 and the issue is still there. Any chance that the developers take care?

Yeah, no knews on this ever being implemented. Apparently some people think we never have meetings that should be quite.

Still a problem in Jaunty. I have this sound totally disabled in normal installations because it's so annoying and loud, but when using a LiveCD I have no choice but to cover the laptop with a pillow every time I reboot (which can happen a lot when debugging a boot issue.) It's very frustrating that you can't change the sound level until *after* the sudden, extremely loud sound has played.

I have a proposed solution.

In Jaunty, at least, the login sound is a separate item in the 'startup programs' or whatever page of the 'Sessions' dialogue.

If that item, rather than _directly_ running a sound just ran a small bash/python/whatever script that checked if XF86Mute was pressed and then only played the sound if it WAS.

Is there any reason wrapping the startup sound like this is a bad idea?

That would be the solution if I had the startup sound turned off and
occassionally want it on. Can't we do it the other way?

On Tue, 2009-08-11 at 14:35 +0000, Who wrote:
> I have a proposed solution.
>
> In Jaunty, at least, the login sound is a separate item in the 'startup
> programs' or whatever page of the 'Sessions' dialogue.
>
> If that item, rather than _directly_ running a sound just ran a small
> bash/python/whatever script that checked if XF86Mute was pressed and
> then only played the sound if it WAS.
>
> Is there any reason wrapping the startup sound like this is a bad idea?
>

When SHIFT key was pressed at Windows 95 start-up, the long sound was disabled. (Don't ask me for newest Windows versions)

I hope GDM _and_ Gnome take care to these feature request. :-)

NO WAY, well, then we really do need this! Goodness.

I'd like this too.