Need help debugging mail() problem.

[nssiusa]

I'm new to PHP and need help understanding what could possibly be the problem with my code. At first, I'm just trying to send an email to myself to see that the email function works. But every time the mail() function returns FALSE and echos the failed message. I know the email address is good (I've replaced my real email here with "[e-mail]"). What can I do to debug this more? Or is there some kind of setup I need to do with the hosting? I'm using GoDaddy.com and they assured that it's already set up to do this.

$toaddress = '[e-mail]';
if(mail($toaddress, 'My Subject', 'Message text'))
echo "Succeeded in sending mail to $toaddress. <br /><br />";
else
echo "Failed in sending mail to $toaddress. <br /><br />";

Thanks for any help in advance!

[bradgrafelman]

Did you try turning on display_errors (or looking in your error logs) and setting error_reporting to E_ALL? Does PHP give any information about why the function failed?

[nssiusa]

I tried what you said like this (slightly midified since my first post):

include_once("Mail.php"); 

ini_set('sendmail_from','[e-mail]');
ini_set('error_reporting','E_ALL');
ini_set('display_errors','On');

$to = "[e-mail]";  

$subject = "Email from php"; 
$body = "Hi \n this is a test"; 

if(mail($to, $subject, $body))
	echo "Sent Mail";
else
	echo "Failed to Send Mail";

It still fails to send the email and no errors show up. Is this how you would recommend setting the php.ini settings? I don't seem to have direct access to editing the php.ini file. Also, are these the correct values for setting them the way you suggested? Forgive me for my ignorance on the ini stuff.

[bradgrafelman]

Try replacing this:

ini_set('error_reporting','E_ALL'); 

with either this:

ini_set('error_reporting', E_ALL); 

or even this:

error_reporting(E_ALL);

(E_ALL is a PHP built-in named constant, not a string).

[nssiusa]

I changed it to E_ALL without the quotes and still nothing. Is it supposed to print out the error right there on the web page?

I noticed the following is set for disable_functions when I check the core PHP settings with phpinfo();

getmyinode, getopt, getrusage, extension_loaded, dl, mysql_pconnect, crack_check, crack_closedict, crack_getlastmessage, crack_opendict, fsockopen, pfsockopen, mysql_list_dbs, mysql_stat, ini_get, ini_get_all, ini_alter, ini_set, get_current_user, get_defined_constants, get_include_path, php_ini_scanned_files, php_uname, phpcredits, restore_include_path, set_include_path, set_time_limit, version_compare, zend_version, getmypid, getmyuid, getmygid, assert_options, assert, fopen, fwrite, fread, file, fpassthru, file, mail, opendir, readdir, closedir

It looks like ini_set is disabled so I can't set anything with it. Also, "display_errors" is set to Off so it won't show any errors, correct? It looks like they don't want anyone to be debugging on their servers.

[bradgrafelman]

nssiusa wrote:

It looks like they don't want anyone to be debugging on their servers.

Do they not enable the error_log directive so you can examine the log?

Sounds like you need to find a more competent host that doesn't get in your way. 🙂