PHP, mail() and qmail?

fiery

Hi,
I tried to run the mail() function with qmail with no success. In /etc/php.ini sendmail_path = /usr/lib/sendmail -t

I used the following PHP function and I can't imagine what's wrong here:

$fh = popen("/var/qmail/bin/qmail-inject", 'w');
$content = "Return-Path: ".$from."\n";
$content.= "Date: ".date(r)."\n";
$content.= "From: ".$from."\n";
$content.= "Subject: ".$subject."\n";
$content.= "To: ".$to."\n";
$content.= $msg;
fputs ($fh, $content);
$qmail_exit = (pclose($fh)>>8)&0xFF;
if ( $qmail_exit != 0 ) {
return FALSE;
}
return TRUE;

This code returns FALSE with $qmail_exit = 111 , that means temporary errors.

Any suggestions.😕

fiery

I've omitted to say that the qmail wrapper for sendmail works fine with Perl scripts. It doesn't work only with PHP (v4.1.2). Perl code is very identical with the PHP one. It opens a pipe to /var/qmail/bin/qmail-inject or "/usr/lib/sendmail -t", puts mail headers ending with "\n" and closes the pipe.

I think that the problem with closing the pipe in PHP causes the mail() function to return error, too.

I can't imagine what's wrong with qmail and PHP that it returns error on pipe closing and why such code works fine with Perl. Here is a Perl example:

open (MAIL,"| /usr/lib/sendmail -t");
print MAIL "To: $to\n";
print MAIL "From: $fromaddr\n";
print MAIL "Reply-to: $replyaddr\n" if $replyaddr;
print MAIL "X-Mailer: Perl Powered Socket Mailer\n";
print MAIL "Subject: $subject\n\n";
print MAIL "$message";
print MAIL "\n.\n";
close(MAIL);

Is there anybody familiar with the mail function in PHP?

stephenhobbs

qmail needs to have the lines terminated correctly by \r\n so try:

$content = "Return-Path: ".$from."\r\n";
$content.= "Date: ".date(r)."\r\n";

etc...

fiery

I found a solution at php.notes newsgroup. This is the post from jimw@php.net:

Regarding qmail causing a qmail-inject: fatal: read-error
Technical Explanation:
Normally when a php script run by apache executes, it calls qmail-inject to send the mail. Because the apache webserver is spawned as the root user, the environment variable for the QMAILMFTFILE defaults to $HOME/.lists,i.e. /root/.lists in this case. During runtime, the apache webserver, however, runs as the 'nobody' user as a member of the 'nobody' group and therefore cannot traverse the directory tree to /root/.lists, thus, the apache error file shows qmail-inject: fatal: read-error when apache attempts to call /var/qmail/bin/qmail-inject. The solution to the problem was to add a line to the apache startup script /etc/rc.d/init.d/httpsd to set the QMAILMFTFILE environment variable to point to a file which the nobody user has permissions to see. In this case, adding QMAILMFTFILE=/tmp/.lists to the startup script on my server solved the problem.