How can apache be allowed to send email?

Question

I have a CentOS 6.2 virtual machine running Apache 2.2 and PHP 5.3 that I'm trying to send email from via PHP's mail() function. I can send email from the CLI without problems but when PHP tries it fails. In the sendmail log is the following:

Oct  9 11:42:03 localhost sendmail[3080]: NOQUEUE: SYSERR(apache): can not chdir(/var/spool/clientmqueue/): Permission denied

It seems like Apache doesn't have permission to do this but I'm not sure how to fix it. I've found a lot discussion about this but nothing specific enough to what I'm doing that I could use. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!

Answer 1

Selinux may cause the issue, to verify run:

getsebool -a | grep mail

If it displays as bellow it is selinux:

allow_postfix_local_write_mail_spool --> off

You may disabled it, but if you want to keep it (and you should as it provides an extra layer of security) you should do something else:

setsebool -P httpd_can_sendmail on

This will allow the httpd to send emails, as when you use php mail().

Answer 2

Hate to necro this, but none of the solutions here worked for me. I know very little about SELinux, but I ended up discovering the problem with this (on CentOS 6):

getsebool httpd_can_sendmail

Which told me it's disabled. Fixed with

setsebool httpd_can_sendmail 1