I installed Ubuntu 11.04, LAMP using tasksel.
I find that PHP mail()
does not work.
I suppose I need to enable it or something? How do I do that?
I installed Ubuntu 11.04, LAMP using tasksel.
I find that PHP mail()
does not work.
I suppose I need to enable it or something? How do I do that?
From the mail manual of php:
Requirements
For the mail functions to be
available, PHP requires an installed
and working email system. The program
to be used is defined by the
configuration settings in the php.ini
file.
This means you have to install some sort of mailserver and configure php to use it. Usually this mailserver is postfix in Ubuntu. However - if the php side you are coding will eventually be stored on a hosting service's side (e.g. xmission), a mail server will most likely already be installed there. In that case just test your site online instead of locally.
If you need to test it on your own system or mean to host it on your own home-server than proceed with:
Installation: postfix / sudo apt-get install postfix
During the process you will be asked in which mode you want postfix installed. There are four possible modes:
The rest of the install options depend on your choice of this general configuration.
Most likely you will choose a satellite install. That means mail will be sent using an extern provider. As smtp-server (outgoing mail server) you will then have to specify your providers smtp. The rest of the options is self explanatory.
Most smtp-servers require a password authentication to send mail. So postfix will need to know that password. Also there are things like encryption to consider (which you'll have to google). This is how you configure postfix using password authentication (sasl):
Install
libsasl2-modules and
sasl2-bin
by clicking the Software Center icons or from terminal using:
sudo apt-get install libsasl2-2 libsasl2-modules sasl2-bin
Enable sasl-auth by adding these lines to /etc/postfix/main.cf
# add to /etc/postfix/main.cf
smtp_sasl_auth_enable = yes
smtp_sasl_security_options = noplaintext noanonymous
smtp_sasl_password_maps = hash:/etc/postfix/sasl_password
Create a file /etc/postfix/sasl_password
with a line like:
smtp.gmail.com [email protected]:USERPASSWORD
Substitute the actual password, username and smtp-address.
Update postfix:
sudo chmod 600 /etc/postfix/sasl_password # for safety of your smtp password
sudo postmap hash:/etc/postfix/sasl_password
sudo postmap /etc/postfix/sender_canonical
sudo /etc/init.d/postfix restart
You might have to circumvent the 'permission denied' bug by chown postfix:postfix /etc/postfix
beforehand.
This should do it in most of the cases. Yet some smtp providers require a specific address as the sender or encryption.
Related: PEAR::Mail interface might also be of interest to you.
Gmail (and perhaps other services) may not like it that you are attempting to send mail this way as it could be deemed insecure by their standards, and would block your attempt i.e. nothing will happen on the screen or someplace of the whole process would block your authentication. Also your POP3 must be enabled.
To counter that see here. (If you want to be on the safe side, then create a dummy Gmail account)