setting up a mail queue

[sneakyimp]

i have a site that does event listings and when a user has posted an event, they can add a list of email addresses that we will notify. i have two questions.

1) i'm using the mail() function with an extra parameter '[e-mail]' which properly sets the return-path header from [e-mail] to [e-mail] HOWEVER it adds this warning to the headers:

X-Authentication-Warning: myplan.myplan.com: apache set sender to [e-mail] using -f

How do I get rid of that?

2) I would like the page handling email address submissions to return immediately to the user after handing off the potentially quite large list of email addresses. This means I would like to implement some kind of email queue system that gets handled by a separate script? maybe my form script forks off another completely independent process that handles all the email? Sort of like a cron job but called on the occasion of a form submission and it might mail 10 messages and then sleep for 10 seconds until all 100-500 emails get sent? Does that sound clear?

[vaaaska]

1) Then why use it? You could set the correct headers by hand...
2) I don't have a direct answer for you but it's been discussed around here a few times before...give a thorough search and I think you'll find some ideas.

[sneakyimp]

1) It varies from mail server to mail server, but on one particular server I work with, this is the only way to change the Return-Path header. If the Return-Path header doesn't match the From header, then mail is often rejected. If I don't use the -f flag, then mail comes from [e-mail].

I didn't set php and the mail server up this way, I'm just trying to deal with it.

2) I have searched once. will search again. I also plan to read phplist code. I don't really understand pcntl_fork() but was hoping that might do it?

[MarkR]

In order for the "-f" option to work successfully, the web user must typically be in a group which is authorised to use it. Read your MTA documentation for more details, and do experiments from the command line.

Mark