beep fails, but exits 0 (unless strace'd) about beep

[ndim]

Do not run beep as setuid-root or via sudo-root. See #11 for details.

In January 2019, I have changed beep to prioritize the new speaker API which does not require setuid-root or sudo-root, fixed the bugs from #11 and others, and published the updated code on https://github.com/spkr-beep/beep where release 1.4.4 is current. A number of distributions are using the new code base at this time: Arch Linux, Debian unstable, Fedora 28 and later, Ubuntu whatever-is-tracking-Debian-unstable.

Please update to beep-1.4 or later, and if the problem persists, you can run a proper strace and report your issue over at https://github.com/spkr-beep/beep/issues so I can take a look.

Your problem might just be the hardware audio mixer input for the PC speaker (going to your laptop speakers) being turned to 0.

[penn5]

Afair you can't debug/strace a setuid as non-root