PHP mail() failing to send to internal addresses

I am trying to send out password reset links for when users开发者_Go百科 forget their password to login to a system I am creating. The problem is, the smtp server is supposedly not configured on the server my system is hosted on. So whenever I try to use the php mail() function to send an email to an internal email address, the emails fail to send, but outside email address (tested with a gmail account), the emails go through. I believe this is because my server is sending directly out to the internet instead of passing through an internal smtp server to resolve where our domain emails should be sent. I was wondering if anyone knew how to configure this on an Xserve or if they knew how to specifically tell the php mail() function where to initially send the email. Any help or pointing in the right direction would be extremely helpful.

Thank you!

mail() doesn't send mail, it just hands things over to the local SMTP server. It does NOT reach out to the recipient's server to deliver the mail. In real world terms, mail() walks your letter down the street and drops it into the neighborhood mailbox. After that, it has absolutely nothing more to do with mail delivery.

Check your local SMTP server's logs to see why the local mails aren't being delivered. There should be a line or two saying why it's registered. Perhaps the local MTA (mail-transfer agent, aka the local "mail man") isn't configured properly.

You can control mail() with it's settings.

This might not solve your overall problem, but hopefully it's useful. This related answer has more information.

We just addressed this problem internally here. Hopefully this will help you as well.

Our environment:

• Ubuntu 12.04 LTS
• PHP 5.3.10

We could telnet into our SMTP server and send mail from our web server, so it wasn't a permissions issue. When attempting to mail externally, all works perfectly. When attempting to mail internally, silent failure.

Our PHP is using sendmail, which by default, attempts to relay mail to 127.0.0.1. Point this at your SMTP server by editing /etc/mail/sendmail.cf. Update the line from:

# "Smart" relay host (may be null)
DS

to

# "Smart" relay host (may be null)
DSyour.smtp.server.com

Restart sendmail and try sending yourself an email via PHP.

This is something that occurs on Parellels’ PLESK server administration software.

Find your ‘main.cf’ configuration file for PostFix, which for CentOS 6, is located at

 /etc/postfix/main.cf

If you can’t find it, do a

 which postfix

SSH command to at least see where Postfix is on your server.

Then, open the file up through a text editor, or in the Linux shell, and make these lines (should be at the end of the file, around line 677) :

virtual_mailbox_domains = $virtual_mailbox_maps, hash:/var/spool/postfix/plesk/virtual_domains
virtual_alias_maps = $virtual_maps, hash:/var/spool/postfix/plesk/virtual
virtual_mailbox_maps = hash:/var/spool/postfix/plesk/vmailbox

commented out like this :

#virtual_mailbox_domains = $virtual_mailbox_maps, hash:/var/spool/postfix/plesk/virtual_domains
#virtual_alias_maps = $virtual_maps, hash:/var/spool/postfix/plesk/virtual
#virtual_mailbox_maps = hash:/var/spool/postfix/plesk/vmailbox

Then, restart the Postfix service

sudo service postfix restart

Apache while your at it (can’t hurt), and voila! Your email address should be receiving those emails now. This also doesn’t affect any of your regular emails or anything else, either.