mail() function not working!

[spiritssight]

Hello I am trying to send a email using the mail() function:

here is what I have in a file for testing:

<?php
ini_set('display_errors', 'ON');
ini_set('error_reporting', E_ALL | E_STRICT );

ini_set( 'sendmail_path', '/usr/lib/sendmail' );

$to = "[e-mail]";
$subject = "Disability Info Seek - Account Acctivation Infomation";
$message = "Hello! This is a simple test email message.";
$from = "[e-mail]";
$headers = "From: $from";
mail($to,$subject,$message,$headers);
echo "Mail Sent.";
?>

it echos that it sent the mail

any help would be great!

Sincerely,
Christopher

[sneakyimp]

whether or not it echoes "Mail Sent" has nothing at all to do with whether it sent the mail. you didn't even bother checking the return value of [man]mail()[/man]. Mail returns TRUE if the mail was successfully accepted for delivery, FALSE otherwise.

you might try this:

if (!mail($to, $subject, $message, $headers)) {
  echo 'oh crikey';
} else {
  echo 'mail successfully queued for delivery';
}

Furthermore, even if the mail was successfully queued for delivery this in no way guarantees that the mail will actually be delivered. That could depend on a million things:
how your server is setup
the destination domain - does it exist?
are you on the mail black list of the remote server
and so on
and so on
and so on

Weedpacket was maintaining a list of 'best practices' for mail around here. You should try looking around for that thread.

[spiritssight]

Ok I have updated my script, I have also got some information from phpinfo

sendmail_from no value no value
sendmail_path /usr/sbin/sendmail -t -i /usr/sbin/sendmail -t -i
SMTP localhost localhost
smtp_port 25 25

Path to sendmail /usr/sbin/sendmail -t -i

so if I am right this means its setup so mail() should work, right?

any how what else could the issue be?

scripte below:

<?php

ini_set('display_errors', 'ON');
ini_set('error_reporting', E_ALL | E_STRICT );

ini_set( 'sendmail_path', '/usr/lib/sendmail' );

$to = "[e-mail]";
$subject = "Disability Info Seek - Account Acctivation Infomation";
$message = "Hello! This is a simple email message.";
$from = "[e-mail]";
$headers = "From: $from";
if (!mail($to, $subject, $message, $headers)) {
  echo 'oh crikey';
} else {
  echo 'mail successfully queued for delivery';
} 
?>

Thanks for any help with this.

Sincerely,
Christopher

[sneakyimp]

I honestly don't know if it's set up properly. Maybe ask your admin?

Another possiblity is that the spam filters on gmail or intercepting your mail. I had this problem with a site I was working on with hotmail accounts and only when i set up an was I able to get around the problem.

In order to determine if the mail is actually getting sent (or not) you'll probably need to get a peek at the mail logs on your server. Talk to your sysadmin.