Hardware FAQ
- What is the minimum recommended hardware to run Miravoice?
- Can I run Miravoice on a Macintosh Computer?
- Can I run Miravoice on a Windows or Linux Computer?
- Can I run Miravoice on a SPARC-based Computer?
- Is it possible to install to a USB thumb drive?
- Why does Miravoice keep crashing on boot inside my Virtual Machine monitor?
- What kind of VOIP phones can I use with Miravoice?
- Do I need any specialized telephony hardware?
We recommend at least a Pentium III PC with no less than 256MB of RAM and a 2GB hard drive. You'll need a supported ethernet card, such as Realtek 8139. Miravoice does not require a very powerful system to run, but it runs best when it is on dedicated hardware. Your old laptop of yesteryear, or a tired old home PC should do just fine.
On Intel-based Macintosh computers, it may be possible to boot Miravoice inside of VMWare Fusion or Oracle VirtualBox. However, you may experience timing issues that could result in choppy audio. It's a much better idea to get a dedicated system for this, but if you absolutely have to, you can run it in a VM.
You should be able to boot Miravoice inside of a Virtual Machine monitor on a Windows system, but again keep in mind that there could be timing issues if your CPU is doing other things besides running a phone switch.
We've tested it inside of QEMU on Solaris/SPARC, and it will boot but it will not be useful. This is not recommended.
Absolutely. The safest way to do this is to remove all other drives from an existing system, and then boot the installation CD with the thumb drive plugged in. In most cases, you'll want to install to sd0, which is SCSI/SATA disk 0. At this point you can take that thumb drive to any system that boots USB and use it as your Miravoice installation.
If you want to run Miravoice inside on a VM, you'll need a CPU with hardware extensions for virtualization, such as VT-X or AMD-V. The core of Miravoice is based on NetBSD, which does not necessarily play nice with VirtualBox. You can try to add a --norawr0 option to the command line, but this could adversely affect timing.
Most SIP-compliant phones will work with Miravoice. This includes phones from Grandstream, Vanaccess, and some Cisco models with the appropriate firmware. In addition, you may use almost any softphone client. We recommend X-lite from Counterpath that works on most PC and Macintosh systems or Bria for the iPhone.
Nope. Nothing is explicitly required. In fact, you can run Miravoice in a VM on a machine and then talk directly to your Miravoice instance with X-lite and use it for all of your calling needs without having to purchase any additional hardware.
