mail() and mail_attach() stuck in queue!

[ppowell]

Re: http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.mail.php#41681

I am using this alternative to mail():

// ORIGINAL FUNCTION FOUND AT [url]http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.mail.php#41681[/url] WITH cc AND bcc MODIFICATIONS BY PHIL POWELL 6/10/2004
function mail_attach($to, $from, $subject, $message, $files = false, $lb="\n", $cc = '', $bcc = '') {
 /*----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
     $to Recipient
     $from Sender (like "[e-mail]" or "Name <[e-mail]>")
     $subject Subject
     $message Content
     $files hash-array of files to attach
     $lb is linebreak characters... some mailers need \r\n, others need \n
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------*/
 $mime_boundary = "<<<:" . md5(uniqid(mt_rand(), 1));
 $header = 'From: '. $from;
 if ($cc) $header .= $lb . "Cc: $cc";
 if ($bcc) $header .= $lb . "Bcc: $bcc";

 if (is_array($files)) {
  $header.= $lb .
                    "MIME-Version: 1.0$lb" .
                    "Content-Type: multipart/mixed;$lb" .
                    " boundary=\"$mime_boundary\"$lb";
  $content = "This is a multi-part message in MIME format.$lb$lb" .
                      "--$mime_boundary$lb" .
                      "Content-Type: text/plain; charset=\"iso-8859-1\"$lb" .
                      "Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit$lb$lb";
 }
 $content .= $message . $lb;
 if (is_array($files)) {
  $content.= "--$mime_boundary$lb";
  foreach ($files as $filename => $filelocation) {
   if (is_readable($filelocation)) {
    $data = chunk_split(base64_encode(implode('', file($filelocation))));
    $content.= "Content-Disposition: attachment;$lb" .
                        'Content-Type: ' . mime_content_type($filelocation) . " name=\"$filename\"$lb" .
                        "Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64$lb$lb" .
                        "$data$lb" .
                        "--$mime_boundary$lb";
   }
  }
 }
 if (mail($to, $subject, $content, $header)) return true;
 return false;
}

However, upon attempt to email something (right now, a very small 10K PNG image file), every email is stuck in queue and goes nowhere for up to 10 minutes, meanwhile, the website is stuck WITH IT!

Has anyone successfully ever auto-generated email with attachments, if so, how?

Thanx
Phil

[Natty_Dreadlock]

i do not think that it's a question of the attachment. Indeed, i believe there's some problem with the configuration of your mail/webserver - check out if the config settings for mailin in php.ini are properly set.
hth

[ppowell]

From what I can tell they are.. for Unix it's

sendmail_path = /usr/sbin/sendmail -t -i

Pretty much standard as we're using RH7.3 here

Phil

[Natty_Dreadlock]

is the mail() funtion working? u should create and little script that sends a mail to your account wihtout any attachment, so that u can see whether it's a problem of the mail_attach() funtion or of the mail() funtion in general.
hth

[ppowell]

I did just that: created a simple one-liner with mail(), and it also bombed.

The site took 5 minutes to load and mail never got sent, literally, until today (18 hours later), just using mail() alone.

Phil

[Natty_Dreadlock]

so it seems it's an issue with your php configuration, or even sendmail - contact your provider (if it's not your server) or try to find some error message (that could give u a hint what's wrong) in sendmail/apache-errorlog.
hth

[ppowell]

Not sure, but everything cleared up now after the system admins talked to the provider, so apparently the problem all along was not my PHP code.

Thanx
Phil