PHP mail() returns true but doesn't work

Posted on 16th Feb 2014 07:03 pm by admin

First off I apologize if this is a newbie question, and I generally don't like asking questions that have already been asked 1,000,000 times, but I've searched far and wide and cannot find a solution to my problem.

Basically I run an experimental server on my home network. I use LAMP (Ubuntu Server, Apache2.2, MySQL5, PHP5).

I simply want to take the data from an HTML form and submit it as an e-mail. I tried using the mail() function like this:
Code: $email = $_POST['email'];
$message = $_POST['message'];
$subject = $_POST['subject'];

$sentmail = mail("example@gmail.com",$subject,$message,"FROM: ".$email."rn");
if($sentmail) {
echo 'Your message has been sent!';
} else {
echo 'Cannot send message.';
}

After some googling, I found one solution that said to add this line:
Code: ini_set("sendmail_from", "example@gmail.com");but it made no difference.

I finally decided to try a different approach using SMTP:
Code: require_once "Mail.php";

$from = "Form Data <".$_POST['email'].">";
$to = "My Name <example@gmail.com>";
$subject = $_POST['subject'];
$body = $_POST['message'];

$host = "ssl://smtp.gmail.com";
$port = "465";
$username = "foo@gmail.com";
$password = "bar";

$headers = array ('From' => $from,
'To' => $to,
'Subject' => $subject);
$smtp = Mail::factory('smtp',
array ('host' => $host,
'port' => $port,
'auth' => true,
'username' => $username,
'password' => $password));

$mail = $smtp->send($to, $headers, $body);

if (PEAR::isError($mail)) {
echo("<p>" . $mail->getMessage() . "</p>");
} else {
echo("<p>Message successfully sent!</p>");
}

Still not working!

This is quite frustrating. It always returns a value of "true" but never actually sends the messages!

Maybe it would help if I had a better understanding of what the mail() function actually does. Where does the message go when handled by mail()? Mustn't it go through a mail server at some point? Port 25 is iffy on my setup, so that could be the issue with mail().

When using the PEAR method though, I specifically indicate port 465, so that can't be the issue.

What am I missing here?

Your Answer:

Login to answer

Other forums

problem with query error
First Thanks to those who helped me on my previous posts, and the following code i'm using is not mi

Inserting a check in checkbox from array value
Hello all,
I have a bit of code that works for a select option box, but does not work for my chec

PHP4 to PHP5 Conversion
Hi Everyone,

I am working on a site that is built up on PHP4 and each page is being started f

Intrastat Report Config in ECC 6.0 - goods Movement in EU countries
Colleagues, need ur help to understand the changes require in ECC 6 standard Report configuration se

Session login issue
I'm wondering how to fix a problem I'm having with a session-based login system

Say I go to h

Pro-rata Billing in Periodic Billing for Rental
Hi guys,

We have a situation, where a rental contract starts at the mid of the month say

Php Mysql Page Loading Notice
Hi all,

I was wondering if there is a way (Sure there is) of showing a message or an image wh

Images outside webroot
Im hopeing someone can help me with this because i cant figure it out.I have setup an ASP.NET websit

order by date not ID number help php
I am trying to orginize the following code to order by date not id number.
any help would be grea

How to implement HTTP connection timeout
Hi All,I would like to implement an HTTP connection timeout.

I am working on a application wh