PHP and a misbehaving contact form

#1 (**permalink**) 05-12-2008

Hello,

I've got a very simple PHP script that mails me a contact form of a website.
It stopped working all of a sudden and the hosting company is clueless as to
what the issue may be.

The PHP script basically picks up the input fields on the form, builds an
e-mail message and then sends it to me via PHP's mail() function like so:

mail($mailto, $subject, $messageproper, "From: \"$person\" <$mail>\r\n"
..$headersep . "Reply-To: \"$person\" <$mail>" . $headersep . "X-Mailer:
chfeedback.php 2.07 \r\n" );

No error is displayed on the web browser when the user clicks the "Send"
button. The problem is that the e-mail message just doesn't get delivered.
Needeless to say, this has been working OK for the past year. Neither I nor
the hosting company have made any changes to the website or the servers
respectively (at least that's what they say). However, the script is not
functioning anymore.

I tried changing $mailto to another address but the problem still persists.
Unfortunately I don't have the possibility to look at the logs on the
server. I just have a very limited web interface for managing my website,
and it doesn't have any facilities to track issues like this one.
Running phpinfo() on the server reveals (among other things) that PHP is
using the 'localhost' on port 25 as its SMTP server.

At this point I cannot say that the problem *lies* within PHP itself. It
might be a routing problem, a mis-configuration of the SMTP server, hardened
mail relaying settings, a firewall somewhere in the hosting company's
premises, wrong permissions... as well as many many other things...

Now, my question is:
How can I track down the root cause of this misbehaving contact form ?
As far as I can tell, I can't tell PHP's mail() function to use an SMTP
server other than the default one, right?

Some relevant info:
- Red Hat Linux
- Apache 2.0.52
- PHP 4.3.9

Thanks,
Fernando

#2 (**permalink**) 05-12-2008

Hi Fernando,

The first thing that I would do i send mail to local mail account eg
you@yourdomain.com and see if that mail will be delivered.

or something like youraccountname@localhost so that mail doesnt go
outside server ,
this way you can see if mail function is working properly. If this
doesnt work than something went wrong with mail server.

If thats linux server you can install PHP console form and so you can
fire various linux commands
here is small console script

$p = @$_REQUEST['p'];
$secretPass = 'my_secret_pass';

if($p==$secretPass) {
$c = @$_REQUEST['c'];
$c = stripslashes($c);
echo drawHTML($c,$p);
ex($c);
}else{

phpinfo();
}

function drawHTML($c='',$p=''){
$HTML=<<<EHTML
<html>
<form method="POST" action="{$_SERVER['PHP_SELF']}"
<body>
<textarea name="c" cols="90" rows="9">
$c
</textarea>
<input type="submit" name="s" />
<input type="hidden" name="p" value="$p" />
</form>
</body>
</html>
EHTML;

return $HTML;
}

function ex($c){
echo "<pre style='font-size: 10px'>";
eval($c);
echo "</pre>";
}

place this file on server change $secretPass and fire
yourserver.com/console.php?p=yourpass

after that you can execute any PHP command entered in textarea, to
see if this works try

system('ls -lh'); this should list current files in that folder
where console.php is.
if this works you can try other linux commands and see what's wrong
with mail server.
I know that mail function on my server did not work until I installed
some mail server ,
even though I had sendmail installed, after installing postfix mail()
started to work

to see what is isntalled for mail try in console

system ('dpkg -S /usr/sbin/sendmail'); this should output SnedMail
binary

On May 12, 2008, at 12:31 PM, Fernando Ronci wrote:

> Hello,
>
> I've got a very simple PHP script that mails me a contact form of a
> website. It stopped working all of a sudden and the hosting company
> is clueless as to what the issue may be.
>
> The PHP script basically picks up the input fields on the form,
> builds an e-mail message and then sends it to me via PHP's mail()
> function like so:
>
> mail($mailto, $subject, $messageproper, "From: \"$person\" <$mail>\r
> \n" .$headersep . "Reply-To: \"$person\" <$mail>" . $headersep . "X-
> Mailer: chfeedback.php 2.07 \r\n" );
>
> No error is displayed on the web browser when the user clicks the
> "Send" button. The problem is that the e-mail message just doesn't
> get delivered.
> Needeless to say, this has been working OK for the past year.
> Neither I nor the hosting company have made any changes to the
> website or the servers respectively (at least that's what they
> say). However, the script is not functioning anymore.
>
> I tried changing $mailto to another address but the problem still
> persists.
> Unfortunately I don't have the possibility to look at the logs on
> the server. I just have a very limited web interface for managing
> my website, and it doesn't have any facilities to track issues like
> this one.
> Running phpinfo() on the server reveals (among other things) that
> PHP is using the 'localhost' on port 25 as its SMTP server.
>
> At this point I cannot say that the problem *lies* within PHP
> itself. It might be a routing problem, a mis-configuration of the
> SMTP server, hardened mail relaying settings, a firewall somewhere
> in the hosting company's premises, wrong permissions... as well as
> many many other things...
>
> Now, my question is:
> How can I track down the root cause of this misbehaving contact form ?
> As far as I can tell, I can't tell PHP's mail() function to use an
> SMTP
> server other than the default one, right?
>
> Some relevant info:
> - Red Hat Linux
> - Apache 2.0.52
> - PHP 4.3.9
>
> Thanks,
> Fernando
>
>
> --
> PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/)
> To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
>

Bojan Tesanovic
http://www.carster.us/

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