How similar is beep to beep2? I use beep2 on Smoothwall Express. It is not installed suid root. Rather, I changed beep2's default output device to /dev/tty13 (would be just as easy to use tty63) and changed the perms on that TTY to 622. Without suid root, beep2 can only open files for input or output for which its user has access; with similar treatment, beep should be almost properly limited.
Neal