Could not instantiate mail function

grandwazir

This error has been troubling me for a while since I can not replicate it outside of Vanilla. My current setup:

• Not using an SMTP server
• name of the sender is specified
• email of the sender is specified

When attempting to send an email Vanilla will always complain it Can not instantiate the mail function. I have checked I can send emails through the mail function on the command line with the following script and it works as expected.

<?php
$to = "grandwazir@x.net";
$subject = "Test mail";
$message = "Hello! This is a simple email message.";
$from = "grandwazir@x.net";
$headers = "From:" . $from;
mail($to,$subject,$message,$headers);
echo "Mail Sent.";
?> 

I am at a loss what to try next given that with debugging on I am getting nothing useful out of Vanilla about why the error is occuring.

peregrine

in your test program replace the last lines with this and report the results you get.

try this - what do you get.

<?php
$to = "grandwazir@x.net";
$subject = "Test mail";
$message = "Hello! This is a simple email message.";
$from = "grandwazir@x.net";
$headers = "From:" . $from;
$rt = @mail($to,$subject,$message,$headers);
if ($rt) {
      echo  "mail was successfully accepted for delivery"
      } else {
       echo "Could not instantiate mail function." 
       }
?> 

grandwazir

mail was successfully accepted for delivery, together with the email in my mailbox.

peregrine

well the php mailer program does this

/library/vendors/phpmailer/class.phpmailer.php

in line 687/

  if(!$rt) {
      throw new phpmailerException($this->Lang('instantiate'), self::STOP_CRITICAL);
    }

just for grins you could change the error message in line 857

'instantiate' => 'Could not instantiate mail function.',

to

'instantiate' => 'my test - Could not instantiate mail function.',

and see if this is where the message is coming from.

if that is the case - you could always comment out the throw statement.

the question is why does it return a FALSE in vanilla and a true in the test program. -

some ideas -
you could echo and dump some variables to debug and may be related to ini_settings - don't know. or quantity of mail going out.

grandwazir

I appear to have found the problem. Vanilla appears to not be specifiying a To address when sending emails for some reason:

PHP message: to: 
PHP message: from: Password Reset
PHP message: body: Hello <hidden>!

grandwazir has reset your password at x. Your login credentials are now:

Email: noreply@x.net
Password: x
Url: http://forum.x.net/

Have a great day!

PHP message: headers: Date: Tue, 28 Aug 2012 13:49:59 -0400
Return-Path: grandwazir@x.net
From: grandwazir <grandwazir@x.net>
Message-ID: <125bd1d48e765cc7d46b394d0406394a@forum.x.net>
X-Priority: 3
X-Mailer: PHPMailer 5.1 (phpmailer.sourceforge.net)
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"

I now need to find out why.

grandwazir

Having changed that message, the error is coming from that part of the library. I did echo the variables earlier but the post was marked for moderation for some reason. I'll try again.

to: noreply@x.net

subject: [x] Password Reset

message:

Hello Bladeruk!

 grandwazir has reset your password at x. Your login credentials are now:

 Email: noreply@x.net
 Password: Uj6827W

 Have a great day!

headers:

Date: Tue, 28 Aug 2012 14:10:53 -0400
Return-Path: grandwazir@x.net
From: grandwazir <grandwazir@x.net>
Message-ID: <de224ea30706dd8b4a1df4e24536c40a@forum.x.net>
X-Priority: 3
X-Mailer: PHPMailer 5.1 (phpmailer.sourceforge.net)
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"

grandwazir

I would post the results of the variable echos but every time I do so my comment is marked for moderation which is rather frustrating. In summary though it is setting everything correctly. The only major difference is phpmailer sets more headers than the test message does.

grandwazir

Thinking about it, Vanilla is setting a different domain in the MessageId field that the test program. Prehaps that could be the problem?

peregrine

look at line 657 vs 671 vs 678 - which one does not have the correct header info.
try logging the header for various messages and combos.

is the $toArr set correctly or does it possibly have a null.
same with $to.

also some other issues here
http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.mail.php

good luck and post your resolution for others.

grandwazir

The array is set correctly as I can get the to address from it when I set error logging in the loop just after 656. It is sending the message from that loop not the others. It is not that the header is incorrect, it is just different from the test script.

The test script uses the hostname of the machine as if you were to do a lookup while the other one is set to the url of the vanilla forum. I am going to try adding that header to the test script and see if that breaks it.

peregrine

can you post what you statements you added for error logging to a file It would be useful to have that as an example here.

$val is correct. correct? in 658?

grandwazir

It appears that running the test script as the same user as the webserver reveals the following errors:

2012-08-28 20:55:45 1T6Rt3-0005nc-8D Failed to create spool file /var/spool/exim4/input//1T6Rt3-0005nc-8D-D: Permission denied
2012-08-28 20:55:45 1T6Rt3-0005nc-8D Failed to create spool file /var/spool/exim4/input//1T6Rt3-0005nc-   8D-D: Permission denied
2012-08-28 20:55:45 1T6Rt3-0005nc-8D Failed to create spool file /var/spool/exim4/input//1T6Rt3-0005nc-8D-D: Permission denied
Could not instantiate mail function.

I have now discovered why this is happening. Exim is set to use Setuid when called. When I reorganised the partitions on the server I disabled setuid for the /usr partition breaking exim.

Adding setuid back to the mount options of the partition fixed the issue.

peregrine

@grandwazir

good deal.

can you post what your coding statements were when you set error logging in the loop in /library/vendors/phpmailer/class.phpmailer.php. If you want to reciprocate.