mail() form submit delay

[hi-liter]

got a strange and frustrating situation;

using a pretty simple php mail() script. when i hit the 'submit' button, it takes anywhere from 7-60 seconds to sumit the form.

HOWEVER, on two other servers it's instant. all three servers are linux w/ sendmail. the two that process the form instantly are shared hosting servers, and the 'slow' server is a dedicated server!

the information in phpinfo(); for sendmail is the same for all three.

here's the form w/ mail();

$datePosted = date("l dS of F Y h:i:s A");

// Read POST request params into global vars
$FName = $_POST['FName'];
$LName = $_POST['LName']; 
$CName = $_POST['CName'];
$BType = $_POST['BType'];
$Address1 = $_POST['Address1'];
$Address2 = $_POST['Address2'];
$City = $_POST['City'];
$State = $_POST['State'];
$Zip = $_POST['Zip'];
$Country = $_POST['Country'];
$Phone = $_POST['Phone'];
$Fax = $_POST['Fax'];
$Email = $_POST['Email'];
$referrer = $_POST['referrer'];
$comments = $_POST['comments'];

$comments = stripslashes($comments);

////////////////////////////////////
// START OF MAIL CODE
////////////////////////////////////

$to	= "[e-mail]";
$cc	= "[e-mail]";
$bcc	= "[e-mail]";
$from    = "[e-mail]";
$subject = "Contact from [email][e-mail][/email]";

$headers = "From: $from\n";
$headers .= "CC: $cc\n";
$headers .= "Bcc: $bcc\n";

$message = "Contact From [email][e-mail][/email] - $datePosted
=============================================================================
Name: $FName $LName
Company: $CName
Type of Business: $BType \n
Address:
$Address1
$Address2
$City
$State, $Zip
$Country \n
Phone: $Phone
Fax: $Fax
Email: $Email
Referred: $referrer
Comments:
$comments 
";

// Send the message
@mail($to, $subject, $message, $headers);

////////////////////////////////////
// END OF MAIL CODE
////////////////////////////////////

any thoughts or similar experiences would be greatly appreciated.

thank you.

[planetsim]

Try getting rid of the "@" infront of mail it may throw an error.

If its working almost instant on other servers there could be many things that could be affecting it. sendmail might not be configured correctly (not in the php.ini).

Server Load this is highly unlikely.

Or even the setup of the httpd.conf file for Apache.

You may even want to change this bit of code as well

$headers = "From: $from\n";
$headers .= "CC: $cc\n";
$headers .= "Bcc: $bcc\n"; 

to

$headers = "From: $from \r\n";
$headers .= "CC: $cc \r\n";
$headers .= "Bcc: $bcc \r\n"; 

[Sxooter]

The problem with mail is that by default, most mail functions wait for the recieving mail server (the first one in line, not the one at the destination) to respond positively or negatively before continuing.

With sendmail, you'll want to use the -q switch with some time so it just tosses the message into a queue and doesn't do the DNS lookups etc... first before releasing the connection.

Be careful, you can fill up a spool drive doing this on your local mail server if it isn't fast enough to keep up.

[hi-liter]

planetsim - i've incorp'd your suggestions, dropping the "@" and adding the \r, which i think is maily geared towards windows, but not 100%, nor 50% on that 🙂

this didn't seem to help out too much w/ regards to the speed of the submit.

Sxooter - thanks for the info, I will look into the -q switch.

appreciate both your thoughts thank you.

[Sxooter]

Using the -q switch I've had a P-III-750 tossing mail before at about 50,000 an hour.

[csn]

Sxooter-

Where'd you see the -q switch for sendmail? Here's what my docs say:

-q[time]
Process saved messages in the queue at given intervals. If time
is omitted, process the queue once. Time is given as a tagged
number, with s' being seconds,m' being minutes (default), h'
being hours,d' being days, and w' being weeks. For example,-q1h30m' or `-q90m' would both set the timeout to one hour
thirty minutes. By default, sendmail will run in the back-
ground. This option can be used safely with -bd.

   -qp[time]
          Similar to -qtime, except that instead of periodically forking a
          child  to  process the queue, sendmail forks a single persistent
          child for each queue  that  alternates  between  processing  the
          queue and sleeping.  The sleep time is given as the argument; it
          defaults to 1 second.  The process will always sleep at least  5
          seconds if the queue was empty in the previous queue run.

   -qf    Process  saved messages in the queue once and do not fork(), but
          run in the foreground.

   -qG name
          Process jobs in queue group called name only.

   -q[!]I substr
          Limit processed jobs to those containing substr as  a  substring
          of the queue id or not when !  is specified.

   -q[!]R substr
          Limit  processed  jobs to those containing substr as a substring
          of one of the recipients or not when !  is specified.

   -q[!]S substr
          Limit processed jobs to those containing substr as  a  substring
          of the sender or not when !  is specified.

I've tried the -q switch before, but it didn't make any difference.

As for mail servers, sendmail was getting so bogged down - huge queue and was crashing the server. I switched to postfix and it performed vastly (amazingly) better.