Sending mail in PHP using Exchange SMTP - php

I have a client that uses Exchange (although I'm not sure which version). From what I know, they do have an SMTP for their Exchange however supposedly I cannot use it since my system is on PHP+Linux. It will not work for the Exchange being on Windows licensed server. How true is it? I am trying to send the mail through SMTP and not directly to the Exchange server.
They did give the details on the SMTP and I have tried and yes, it doesn't work. I got an error 'Could not connect to SMTP host'.
What are my other options in sending mail through PHP? Been googling around and found something called WebDav. Would that be a wise choice?
EDIT>
I guess something went right overnight however it's not everything. I can (presumably) connect to the SMTP however I can't send email to other domains. I tried sending to it's own domain and it works. Checked my inbox and the email is there however if I send to Live or GMail, it doesn't work. It gives me this error:
PHPMAILER_RECIPIENTS_FAILEDemail#email.com
The email#email.com is a correct existing email. I have even tested with GMail and there's no problem in sending. Now what I would like to know is where the problem lies. Could it really be in the coding or the SMTP server?
As an extra note, I'm using Joomla 1.5.22.

They are incorrect. SMTP is a standardized protocol and has nothing to do with the operating system used from a client. Exchange has a few particular things that are somewhat odd about how it handles SMTP but they will more than likely not matetr for you.
If you're getting a 'Could not connect to SMTP host', that's a pretty fundamental issue it means one of several things:
The server is not accepting inbound SMTP from anyone
The server is not accepting inbound SMTP from your IP
There is a firewall getting in the way.
There are a lot of ways to troubleshoot this. The easiest, assuming this is a server that should be accessible to the general internet, is to, from a command prompt, run 'telnet 1.2.3.4 25' (where 1.2.3.4 is the IP where the server should be). If that connects, then see if you can run the same command from the machine where your PHP is. If not, tell the client that you can't seem to access SMTP from the outside and see if they can troubleshoot.

You could use gmail? I know you might not be using phpmailer, but the how-to should set you in the right direction.
It sounds like "they" (who I'm guessing are the sys-admin for the network you're on?) may have other ideas on you doing this though - ports could be restricted etc.

Related

what properties should be set for my SMTP

I have setup a Website based on HTML with the exception of a contact.php page. I am hosting this website on my Rasberry Pi 3 computer on Debian flavor of linux Jesse Light. This is headless as it hosts my Portfolio website. I am using Apache2 webserver and installed sendmail as my Mail Transfer Agent (MTA). The problem is I have been spinning my wheels researching for the past week and I am stuck.
My issue is I send email from my php contact page on my live server but nothing ever arrives in my inbox after sending it. I get a mail sent message from my php script after about a minute after sending but then Nothing arrives in the inbox. I am thinking My SMTP on my php.ini is not correct. I put my website domain name FQ name. I am using Microsoft Exchange Online hosted email domain by GoDaddy. Also, anyone have any good advise on what my from / to should be set to on my SMTP configurations?
Sounds like a direct reject to me.
Some hints:
check the SMTP logs from your MS Exchange server (if a connection has been opened and potentially been refused for whatever reason)
check the PHP / Apache logs and see, whether an PHP fatal error or warning occured (mybad bad credentials or wrong port?)
I have had bad experiences with MS Exchange server and SMTP, make sure its proper setup.
check the credentials and settings from an independent client to see if they work flawless.
Hope that helps. Otherwise please provide more details and log samples.
Is your contact.php program hosted on the Godaddy server? If yes- It's not possible to send mail through Godaddy shared hosting servers using your own SMTP settings. You can only send from Godaddy's relay server when using a shared hosting plan. If you wanted to be able to send through your own SMTP servers, you'd need to be hosting with either a VPS or Dedicated Server plan.
Check maillog on your server and you will get the smtp connection timeout errors.
Let me know, in case the problem is something different- will try to address it.

Mail an exchange server SMTP server response: 550-Verification failed

How do I send an email to my exchange server? When I set the php.ini file with send_from="x#domain.com" it says 550 verification failed. How do I verify myself?
I am using SMTP: mail.domain.com
Its probably a good idea to use a class like phpmailer http://sourceforge.net/projects/phpmailer/ to do this.
That way if you have multiple projects that need to send via a different account or different servers then you won't have any problems.
The error you're getting is because your exchange server requires authentication and your script isn't using authentication or its using the wrong information. I've never really relied on the built in php sendmail functions so I can't be 100% sure but I don't think it supports authentication. (I might be wrong on that point, but I still recommend a class that you can configure per script over a globally configured mail account)

How to send myself an email with php, Windows 7, WAMP server? need SIMPLE solution

I have spent the last 15 hours trying to figure out a simple, free way to send a simple text email via a php script when a form is filled out on a html page. I don't care how it looks, as these emails are only going to be sent to me (at most 15 a day). I don't need anything except a simple email to me when the form is filled out. I understand everything except I cannot get past:
Failed to connect to mailserver at "localhost" port 25, verify your "SMTP" and "smtp_port" setting in php.ini
What i have tried:
Playing around with the pear mail extension and using smtp.gmail.com
Downloading countless smtp mail server applications.
Using my ISP smtp and port 25: smtp-server.wi.rr.com.
Using PHPMailer.
Using the windows SMTP server.
Although all of these things should work... I am apparently too dumb to figure it out. I have read every sentence on the subject on the internet and have tried to follow instructions, but each time I try something else, I just run into more problems. Someone PLEASE give me a simple fix to this, so I can never look at PHP mail stuff again.
If you're sure all these settings are correct, you should check your firewall. If all else fails, try sending a mail from a mail client (or make an attempt using Telnet!). If this succeeds, than you're doing something wrong in the PHP configuration, or the way you send the e-mail. If sending fails with other clients too, than the problem lies in the ability to send e-mails from that computer at all.
Your own ISP should work fine. Remember that most ISP's don't require you to enter a password. Only the smtp server will suffice in that case.
Folks.
After many hours of trying I found that:
You don't need additional tools like mailservers or pear additions. These only provide additional potential security leaks that you have no control or insight over.
To get mail function to work on localhost, all you need to do is change the php.ini file.
I just checked my outlook account settings and copied those to the php.ini file.
So SMTP server, port, username and password.
Now,
You may think it does not work but
You should know that many mail clients reject emails if the From field has a different domain than the actual domain an email is received from.
So if the php.ini file contains for example
smtp.ziggo.nl
Be sure that the header contains:
From: info#ziggo.nl
So for making universal code on both localhost and remote host, I check for the existence of a file that I only have locally (e.g. z_local) and set the headers accordingly. If the local file does not exist I must be on the remote ISP and choose the header "From: info#remotesite.com"

PHP mail() not working

I'm building a site on my home computer using MAMP. The code I'm using employs the PHP mail() function to send emails, but whenever I test it, the mails aren't getting sent.
My computer is connected to the net, but I'm wondering if there's something about local hosting that prevents mails from getting sent. I'm not getting any kind of error message.
Any ideas?
PHP can send mail in one of two ways.
The first, and the default on non-Windows systems, is to use the local mail transfer agent installed on the system. This would be "sendmail" or an application compatible with it, the most popular probably being postfix.
The other is to connect via SMTP to some mail server.
You will either need to install a mail transfer agent on your local system (and set it up correctly), or edit PHP's configuration to specify an SMTP server address and port.
Yes, there are things that could block locally hosted mail. For one, your ISP could block SMTP to servers other than the ISP. ask your ISP support if they block SMTP... Or try telexing so someone's MX port 25 and do you get a response?
If your ISP blocks smtp you can still send the mail, but first you must relay that email through a hosted email server like your ISP mail server. This process is called 'smart hosting' and you can search for more info.
Even if you are not blocked on port 25, many sites will refuse or lose smtp traffic that originates from a dynamic or residential IP address, so again the smart host suggestion.
Also I suggest not using the built in mail() function in PHP... Use something that replaces and improves it like http://pear.php.net/package/Mail or http://sourceforge.net/projects/phpmailer/. Again, use the SMTP method as it is way more reliable than direct sending or calling Sendmail.
It is important to confirm this problem, doing SMTP manually over telnet. That way you isolate the problem from PHP. I did ISP support for years and saw this question lots. Most people setup php and mail correctly but get stuck on a background network issue with SMTP.
If you have Wireshark installed, it can record network traffic and you might see the actual SMTP traffic, for example the remote server may be refusing your connection. Wireshark is helpful but not required to solve this though. Good luck.
You need to setup SMTP server in order to be able use mail function, or you can use PHPMailer class, with it you can avoid using mail function and setup problems, PHPMailler need socket extension to be loaded in order to function correctly.

Exchange rejecting php mail from same domain

I have an IIS server running PHP on an Apache Module. I am running a domain on it, and this domain has a seperate setup for email which uses an exchange server. When I try to send email from the website using php mail() the exchange server rejects it. I.e. the header from line is sender#this-domain.com and it is sending to receiver#this-domain.com, both are email addresses set up in the exchange, even though the sender has no direct relationship with exchange.
The emails are not getting through. We tried using a Yahoo adress in the from line but nothing. Has anyone ever come across a problem like this.
You have to either configure the exchange server to accept relay requests based on the origin ip or some transparent authorization mechanism (don't know much about IIS and Exchange and integrated windows authentication, but the good people over at http://serverfault.com do. ). Or use some mailing library that can handle smpt authentication like e.g. http://swiftmailer.org
I once ran into a problem like this which involved the Exchange server not wanting to accept anonymous connections or that it would only accept mail from certain SMTP servers. Have you checked the configuration on your Exchange server to eliminate those possibilities?

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