PHP mail function not working on Centos server

Question

I am using centos Server and have to send the mail to the user so i copied running code of mine from one server and used it in here, but it is not sending mails.

Code is :

                $to = $email; //writing mail to the user
                $subject = "Hii";
                $message = "<table>
                <tr><td> Hello ".$email.",</td></tr>
                <tr><td> Some Text </td></tr>
                <tr><td> Some Text </td></tr>
                <tr><td> Some Text </td></tr>
                <tr><td> Some Text </td></tr>
                </table>" ;
                $from = "example@domain.com";
                // To send HTML mail, the Content-type header must be set
                    $headers  = 'MIME-Version: 1.0' . "\r\n";
                    $headers .= 'Content-type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1' . "\r\n";
                // Additional headers
                $headers .= 'From: Team <example@domain.com>' . "\r\n";

                if(mail($to,$subject,$message,$headers))
                {
                    echo "0";// mail sent Successfully.
                }
                else
                {
                    echo "1";
                }

It always print 1. Same code running fine on other project. Please guide me what i can do to enable it here too? Any help will be highly appreciated!

`yum install sendmail` should def help, cause if you havent installed it, chances are its not there in the system. — Sabeen Malik, Dec 01 '11 at 14:57
look it up in google, you will find a lot of help in configuring it. — Sabeen Malik, Dec 01 '11 at 15:09
In case you don't want to install sendmail at once (as most answers here for some reason suggest), you can try "/etc/init.d/sendmail status" or "/etc/init.d/postfix status" and "cat /var/log/maillog" — Rauli Rajande, Jan 15 '15 at 16:35

score 26 · Accepted Answer · edited Jul 19 '16 at 23:47

After installing sendmail* and running the following commands:

[root@sendmail ~]# yum install sendmail*
[root@sendmail mail]# yum install dovecot
[root@sendmail mail]# cd /etc/mail/
[root@sendmail mail]# vi local-host-names
# local-host-names - include all aliases for your machine here.
example.com
[root@sendmail mail]# vi /etc/dovecot.conf
protocols = imap pop3 //uncomment
[root@sendmail mail]# m4 sendmail.mc > sendmail.cf
[root@sendmail mail]# make
[root@sendmail mail]# /etc/init.d/sendmail start
[root@sendmail mail]# /etc/init.d/saslauthd start
[root@sendmail mail]# /etc/init.d/dovecot start
[root@sendmail mail]# chkconfig sendmail on
[root@sendmail mail]# chkconfig dovecot on
[root@sendmail mail]# chkconfig saslauthd on

I still had the same issue. I checked my /var/log/maillog and saw an error:

My unqualified host name (domain) unknown; sleeping for retry

After more searching, I changed /etc/hosts from:

127.0.0.1     localhost localhost.localdomain domain
ip.ip.ip.ip  domain localhost

to:

 127.0.0.1   localhost.localdomain localhost domain
 ip.ip.ip.ip  localhost domain

and now the mail function is now working fine.

I used these instructions to set up sendmail for CentOS in a Docker container. I did however only have to to do yum install sendmail to use mail(). Configuring the hosts file as above proved critical in order to make the mail function send email in a timely fashion. Thank you! — Martin Carstens, Aug 25 '16 at 16:48

score 8 · Answer 2 · edited Feb 14 '18 at 01:14

I had the same problem. I have a development server at home and prod server at external server house and incoming mails go to other server. PHP:s mail() works nicely in server house, but not at home.

I tested a bit and got it to work at home in the same manner as in server house. The difference between methods in server house and home is the configuration of sendmail. Server house I had only to install sendmail and it was fine, but at home I had to install also sendmail-cf and use it to add outgoing mail server address.

Let's assume you have Centos, Apache and PHP at home server and you want to send emails using PHP:s mail() function.

1) Set hostname on home server into two places: /etc/sysconfig/network and /proc/sys/kernel/hostname this way:

 # nano /etc/sysconfig/network
   NETWORKING=yes
   HOSTNAME=mydns157.dlinkddns.com

 # nano /proc/sys/kernel/hostname
   HOSTNAME=mydns157.dlinkddns.com

2) Install sendmail and sendmail-cf:

 # yum install sendmail sendmail-cf

3) Add the following row into /etc/mail/sendmail.mc, where you have your ISP:s outgoing mail server:

 define(`SMART_HOST',`mail.myisp.com')dnl

4) Update sendmail.cf:

 # /etc/mail/make

5) Restart sendmail and apache:

 # service sendmail restart
 # service httpd restart

6) Boot to update hostname:

 # reboot

That's it. Now the following works:

# php -r'mail("user@somedomain.com", "Subject", "Body", null, "-fme@mydomain.com");'

You can skip -f:

# php -r'mail("user@somedomain.com", "Subject", "Body");'

in which case the sender's name become automatically user@hostname, eg. root@mydns157.dlinkddns.com.

Some notes of hostname

The selection of hostname is critical. The default in Centos6 is localhost.localdomain, but mail() is not working with it if you skip your own sender address (eg. '-fme@mydomain.com') when calling mail(). If you are sure, that you always call mail() using your real address as sender address, the hostname can be whatever, but if you have existing calls to mail() that lacks the sender address (I have hundreds of this like calls for testing purposes), then you must have a real domain as a hostname, because your server's hostname is used as a sender-address-domain in these cases. Real in the sense that domain must have at least DNS A-record (for some reason my ISP doesn't require NS-record for sender address, only A-record, but test and check with your ISP). The downside of using non-email-domain as a sender address is that replys and delivery notifications will go to bit's heaven, but if you drop sender address in your code, it usually means that you test and debug something and don't need reply functionality. The domain can be eg. the one you get from dynamic dns server eg. mydns157.dlinkddns.com, which can point to your home router (but not have to). You can get DNS record in PHP using dns_get_record("mydns157.dlinkddns.com"), which returns an array like this:

 [host] => mydns157.dlinkddns.com
 [type] => A
 [ip] => 92.152.214.137
 [class] => IN
 [ttl] => 7

If type in above DNS-record is NS, then the domain acts as an email domain, which is OK for hostname of own server, but the effect is a little different. If you set as hostname an existing email domain eg. myexistingemaildomain.com, and send a message to me@myexistingemaildomain.com eg for debugging purposes, sendmail thinks that the message has to be delivered to mail-folder of user me on this server. If me user doesn't exist, the sending fails and if the user exists, then the message goes to /var/mail/me. This can be what you want, but (like me) you may want that all messages are delivered outside instead of server folders.

Your hostname (in DNS record) doesn't need to point to your server's actual external IP to make mail() work in lack-of-sender-address cases, but there is no harm of it. The main thing is that hostname has a valid A-record and that the domain belongs to you. If the domain doesn't belong to you, then there may born a security hole. If you set as hostname some existing email domain eg. microsoft.com (for whatever reason) and send a message to someone without adding your own sender address when calling mail() (eg. '-fme@mydomain.com'), the sender address will be automatically you@microsoft.com. If you are logged as root, the sender address will be root@microsoft.com. Replys and notifications of failed deliveries go then to root@microsoft.com and this may not be your intention.

from `service sendmail restart` im getting an error `Starting sendmail: 554 5.0.0 No local mailer defined 554 5.0.0 QueueDirectory (Q) option must be set` — t q, Feb 14 '18 at 01:15

score 8 · Answer 3 · answered Aug 08 '13 at 04:16

I know this has been answered but I had a similiar problem. In case anyone else....

/var/log/maillog showed me a Postfix permission issue.

sendmail: fatal: chdir /var/spool/postfix: Permission denied

Tracking down error I found solution to be SELinux policy on CentOS (I'm using version 6).

Quick answer: setsebool httpd_can_sendmail 1

You can use -P to make the change permanent; I just needed for password reset e-mail so not needed for my case.

Credit: http://www.spidersoft.com.au/2011/posftix-permission-denied-problem/?ModPagespeed=noscript

EDIT: I would have commented but I don't have enough reputation yet.

Seems like SELinux isn't your issue then. Do you need still help ? — preOtep, Aug 30 '18 at 15:14

score 3 · Answer 4 · answered Dec 01 '11 at 12:52

I'd recommend using SwiftMailer to simply a lot of this.

require_once('../lib/swiftMailer/lib/swift_required.php');
function sendEmail(){
  //Sendmail
  $transport = Swift_SendmailTransport::newInstance('/usr/sbin/sendmail -bs');

  //Create the Mailer using your created Transport
  $mailer = Swift_Mailer::newInstance($transport);

  $body="Dear $fname,\n\nYour job application was successful. \n\nYours,\n\nEamorr\n\n\n\n\n\n\n";


  //Create a message
  $message = Swift_Message::newInstance('Subject goes here')
    ->setFrom(array($email => "no-reply@yourdomain.com"))
    ->setTo(array($email => "$fname $lname"))
    ->setBody($body);

  //Send the message
  $result = $mailer->send($message);
}

worked on mail all day but errors never went away, this fixed my problem in 30 minutes! — t q, Feb 14 '18 at 03:49

score 2 · Answer 5 · answered Oct 12 '13 at 10:50

I just had this issue, two things.

My emails were going to spam, definitely check that. Probably because my server didn't have proper PTR and SPF records.

But also, I found it a lot easier to test sendmail with this:

sendmail -s 'me@gmail.com'
Subject:Testing!
hey there, how ya doin?
CTRL+D

score 2 · Answer 6 · answered Dec 13 '16 at 07:48

2

Always check your maillog in /var/log/maillog to know the cause of the problem. I had a similar issue once after having properly configured postfix. I got an error saying fatal: setrlimit: Permission denied. Workaround is check if the httpd can send mail is enabled or not by getsebool httpd_can_sendmail command. If httpd can send mail is off then enable it by the command: setsebool -P httpd_can_sendmail 1. Hope this helps.

answered Dec 13 '16 at 07:48

Ratul Doley

499
1
6
12

in my case it was disabled – Shashank Pujari Jan 29 '21 at 11:01

score 2 · Answer 7 · answered Dec 01 '11 at 12:53

2

may this helps you

ini_set('sendmail_from', 'example@domain.com');

answered Dec 01 '11 at 12:53

Sonal Khunt

1,876
12
20

PHP mail function not working on Centos server

7 Answers7

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