Question

PHP mail() function enable

Posted August 22, 2012 326k views
Hi DigitalOcean team, first of all, congrats for everything ! That an awesome service ! Next, I would know how to enable the mail() fonction. By default I think it's disabled because I received an error with wordpress trying to retreive a lost password. Le message n’a pas pu être envoyé. Raison possible : votre hébergeur peut avoir désactivé la fonction mail()… The message can't been sent. Possible reason : your host has maybe deactivated mail() function... Thank you
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19 answers
collinpatrickhenderson April 14, 2013
Indeed, the steps I took were

1) If sendmail isn't installed, install it: apt-get install sendmail
2) Configure hosts file correctly: nano /etc/hosts
And make sure the line looks like this: 127.0.0.1 localhost localhost.localdomain yourhostnamehere
3) Run the sendmail config and answer 'Y' to everything: sendmailconfig

I restarted apache for good measure: service apache2 restart

After that my mail was sending instantly.
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  • cmos January 23, 2015

    @collinpatrickhenderson Thanks for your post, I followed it sort of..
    Note: On Digital Ocean Ubuntu 14.04 LAMP image.

    1) ran $ sendmail myemail@yahoo.com
    This told me sendmail could be found in the following packages:

    • exim4-daemon-heavy
    • exim4-daemon-light
    • lsb-invalid-mta
    • postfix
    • citadel-mta
    • courier-mta
    • dma
    • esmtp-run
    • masqmail
    • msmtp-mta
    • nullmailer
    • opensmtpd
    • qmail-run
    • sendmail-bin
    • ssmtp
    • xmail

    I decided to install the sendmail-bin. I believe this is all that is needed. For sending mail from form etc.

    2) $ sudo apt-get install sendmail-bin

    Then checked hosts file.
    3) $ nano /etc/hosts
    Looked like:
    127.0.1.1 myhostname myhostname
    127.0.0.1 localhost
    4) control+x to quit nano

    Then ran:
    5) $ sudo sendmailconfig

    Accepted Y to all choices. I think there was three or four..Once finished..

    Tested again with:
    6) $ sendmail myemail@yahoo.com
    Test message

    It worked nicely. Only thing now is I wonder how much more should be configured for security and performance, I did see a lot in that configuration.. Someone should do a tutorial on sendmail configuration???

    Reply Report
  • miteshkotak September 7, 2017

    The sendmail package doesn’t work with ubuntu 16.04.
    It has some malware issue.

    Even though i tried to remove it completely from ubuntu. it still uses the CPU (DISK I/O) almost upto 99%.

    Reply Report
melanie March 31, 2013
I was having the same problem - sendmail WAY too slow. Found fix for it here: http://www.flogiston.net/blog/2009/05/11/sendmail-painfully-slow-on-ubuntu/
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canartuc December 5, 2013
Why don't you use this way: https://www.digitalocean.com/community/articles/how-to-use-gmail-or-yahoo-with-php-mail-function . This is excellent tutorial and I have never got problem with it. I am using Gmail as SMTP server and everything is both super fast and reliable.
How To Use Gmail or Yahoo with PHP mail() Function
by Jesin A
Read through this tutorial to learn how to use Gmail or Yahoo with PHP mail() function.
Reply Report
info1 August 26, 2012
Thank you api2 i've tryed that, but it's not working has is, so for others, here is the hole walkthrough

log has root or use sudo

apt-get install php-pear
pear install mail
pear install Net_SMTP
pear install Auth_SASL
pear install mail_mime

apt-get install postfix
you should get a install dialog ensure that the Internet site is selected and the Mail server name is localhost

vi /etc/php5/apache2/php.ini set sendmail path to /usr/sbin/sendmail -t -i

Reboot apache gracefully
apachectl graceful

Now you're all done !

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moisey August 22, 2012
Hi Jonathan,

Sorry I don't speak French, any chance you could convert that to english?

Also check the functionality of your basic mail delivery from the command line:

# sendmail user@domain.com
Body of Test Message

If that mail gets delivered then we know its not a systems problem but an issue with how it's interacting with Wordpress/PHP.

Thanks
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info1 August 23, 2012
Hi Raiyu,

Here is the error I received on my terminal when I try sendmail info@jonathanlafleur.ca
-bash: sendmail: command not found

For the french message, it's already translated right after the french part,

The message can't been sent. Possible reason : your host has maybe deactivated mail() function

Like i've asked, I would know if there's possible to explain me how to install a mail service, don't need to be "real" email, but just to enable the system to send me some information via e-mail when needed.

Thank you !
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api2 August 23, 2012
Hey Jonathan,

It sounds like your server is missing an SMTP service to deliver email. You can install sendmail which should enable these features for you.

yum install sendmail (CentOS)
apt-get install sendmail (Ubuntu)

Verify that your mail server is now online by sshing into your server and running:

telnet localhost 25

If that works mail should be enabled on your server.
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info1 August 28, 2012
if you receive : postdrop: warning: unable to look up public/pickup: No such file or directory.

That mean that sendmail was previously installed and that messing things up. So do the following :

mkfifo /var/spool/postfix/public/pickup
ps aux | grep sendmail
kill
service postfix restart
Reply Report
besturdughazals January 1, 2013
Have you tried WP SMTP plugin? It worked for me.
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libripens January 29, 2013
I'm about to quit DigitalOcean. The instructions on Postfix don't work. Sendmail takes too long to process a simple form. And I'm tired of trying everything I find to make the stupid php mail( ) function work.
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moisey January 29, 2013
For outbound email you do not need to install an MTA like postfix, just point it your sendmail binary and that's enough to send mail out.

That's because all of the heavy lifting is done on the remote side where your emails are being delivered to.
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matthewvogt July 25, 2013
Hey everyone,

I've followed this from not using postfix to setting up sendmail. I somehow didn't have a hostname in my sendmail which added my server to the spamhaus project... I added that and now I'm ok there, all clear and indeed my wordpress' are sending emails! (using this http://cbl.abuseat.org/sendmailhelp.html and adding Djmail.yourdomain.com to your sendmail.cf and submit.cf)

Unfortunately they're getting caught up in gmail's spam filters. I found SPF fails in the email headers so I've added SPF records to my domains to allow my server IP and Google's MX stuff too and they now pass ok!

v=spf1 a mx ip4:{my server ip} ip4:{xxx.xx.0.1/16 - dreamhost's mail DNS stuff} include:_spf.google.com ~all

Now they're still getting caught in my spam filters.

From http://mattvogt.com/contact-me/

I get:

"
Delivered-To: matthewvogt@gmail.com
Received: by 10.49.94.5 with SMTP id cy5csp107306qeb;
Wed, 24 Jul 2013 18:37:41 -0700 (PDT)
X-Received: by 10.52.233.33 with SMTP id tt1mr729802vdc.2.1374716260930;
Wed, 24 Jul 2013 18:37:40 -0700 (PDT)
Return-Path:
Received: from vogtvisuals.com (web1.vogtvisuals.com. [198.211.99.175])
by mx.google.com with ESMTPS id sj10si11347043vdc.66.2013.07.24.18.37.40
for
(version=TLSv1 cipher=DES-CBC3-SHA bits=168/168);
Wed, 24 Jul 2013 18:37:40 -0700 (PDT)
Received-SPF: pass (google.com: domain of www-data@vogtvisuals.com designates 198.211.99.175 as permitted sender) client-ip=198.211.99.175;
Authentication-Results: mx.google.com;
spf=pass (google.com: domain of www-data@vogtvisuals.com designates 198.211.99.175 as permitted sender) smtp.mail=www-data@vogtvisuals.com
Received: from vogtvisuals.com (web1.vogtvisuals.com [127.0.0.1])
by vogtvisuals.com (8.14.4/8.14.4/Debian-2ubuntu2) with ESMTP id r6P1bdRU001624
for ; Thu, 25 Jul 2013 01:37:39 GMT
Received: (from www-data@localhost)
by vogtvisuals.com (8.14.4/8.14.4/Submit) id r6P1bdeU001623;
Thu, 25 Jul 2013 01:37:39 GMT
To: matthewvogt@gmail.com
Subject: test
X-PHP-Originating-Script: 33:class-phpmailer.php
Date: Thu, 25 Jul 2013 01:37:39 +0000
From: matt
Message-ID: <00266df4cf77ec98b7c9efb4872038e6@mattvogt.com>
X-Priority: 3
X-Mailer: PHPMailer 5.2.1 (http://code.google.com/a/apache-extras.org/p/phpmailer/)
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"

From: matt
Subject: test

Message Body:
test

--
This mail is sent via contact form on Art Work http://mattvogt.com

"

Any ideas?? I've tested multiple different wordpress platforms from my server and same business :(

Could it be I need a fully qualified hostname? Essentially I would like a variety of domains to sendmail from my single server. Not sure where else to explore.

Found this too:


"
If you are sending from a fully qualified domain, add it to the local-host-names file. In Ubuntu, it would be /etc/mail/local-host-names. Make sure it reads something like this:

localhost
[domain.com]
[server name]

Now in the /etc/hosts, make sure it reads the following.

127.0.0.1 [domain.com] [server name] localhost
...

Then

sudo /etc/init.d/sendmail restart

"

But once again, I need multiple domains sending from this singe server. Any advice would be greatly appreciated!




Then this

If you dont use your .mc files then you can add the following definition to your sendmail.cf and submit.cf:
Djmail.yourdomain.com
Reply Report
matthewvogt July 25, 2013
Hey everyone, I contacted support and they pointed me to http://www.mail-tester.com/ which revealed my server has been blacklisted again (probby when hostname testing) and I need to setup DKIM.

In retrospect, I think using a third party, already established mail provider throgh SMPT in Wordpress is easiest. I found a solid tutorial: http://cool-tricks.net/contact-form-7-configuration/#install-contact-form-7
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michael October 17, 2013
By using a Wordpress SMTP plugin you get to take advantage of a dedicated mail server, rather than relying solely on your droplet. On my tests I have found that using SMTP plugin with a Google and GoDaddy mail servers gets the contact form into my inbox faster than it does with setting up a mail server. It also simplifies your sever configuration.
Reply Report
sloan.eric February 11, 2014
@sunjerseys.com

After changing my hosts file my email sends from this address:

info@localhost.localdomain

Any ideas?
Reply Report
kamaln7 February 14, 2014
@sloan.eric: You can change that by setting the "From" header: http://il1.php.net/manual/en/function.mail.php (additional_headers).
Reply Report
benrebla September 5, 2016

An error occurred.

Sorry, the page you are looking for is currently unavailable.
Please try again later.

If you are the system administrator of this resource then you should check the error log for details.

Faithfully yours, nginx.

Reply Report
infoaddeaa4b9b8 December 1, 2016

I’m not receiving emails from mail() function.

I created a php test:

<?php
    ini_set( 'display_errors', 1 );
    error_reporting( E_ALL );
    $from = "info@crazytraction.com";
    $to = "pabloezequiel@gmail.com";
    $subject = "PHP Mail Test script";
    $message = "This is a test to check the PHP Mail functionality";
    $headers = "From:" . $from;
$headers .= "Reply-To: $to";
    var_dump(mail($to,$subject,$message,$headers));

The output is…

bool(true)

I’m using a LEMP droplet on Ubuntu 16.06. I already installed postfix, opened port 25 and checked my host file…

127.0.0.1 localhost.crazytraction localhost amsterdam

which I think is correct (amsterdam is the hostname)

I can receive the email in one of my accounts, but I tried other 3 and none of them received the email, even Gmail is not receiving it.

What Am I doing wrong?

Btw, I tested to send an email using the same function on another droplet and it worked, so it has to be something with the environment, but I cannot figure what it is!

Thank you.

Reply Report
crispytx March 30, 2017

I spent hours tonight trying to figure out why sendmail and the php mail() function wouldn’t work on my DigitalOcean server. I followed all of the tutorials and couldn’t get anything to work. It turns out Gmail was blocking all of the mail coming from my DigitalOcean server. The mail I was sending couldn’t even make it to the spam folder. I discovered this by running sendmail from the command line. I then tried sending mail to a non-gmail account, and it worked just fine! So if anyone else is going through hell trying to figure this out, try sending some mail to a non-gmail account, or try running sendmail from the command line to see if you get some sort of error about Google / Gmail blocking your mail to prevent spam.

AND ONE MORE THING: The DigitalOcean server that was blocked by Gmail was not associated with a domain name, it simply had an IP address. I tried using sendmail and the php mail function on another DigitalOcean server of mine that is associated with a domain name, and that email was NOT BLOCKED. So if Gmail is blocking mail from your DigitalOcean server, it may be because your server isn’t associated with a domain name.

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