Mailcatcher: PHP mail() function returns false

Question

i will try to describe my problem:

to debug outgoing email in local environment i installed mailcatcher (http://mailcatcher.me/) but faced some problems with catching mails sent from web. if i run the script which contains only one mail() call, everything is fine and i can see the sent email in mailcatcher 127.0.0.1:1080. But when i try to access the same script from the web browser, the mail() function returns false, no any error displayed in browser, nothing in error logs. In mail log even i can see the call for mail() function.

i am not sure, may be my nginx/php-fpm configuration is wrong, or something wrong with permissions.

selinux is disabled.

please help if you know the solution.

Thanks in advance

Answer 1

I faced the same problem on ubuntu 14.04.

/etc/php5/cli/php.ini and /etc/php5/fpm/php.ini had the same sendmail_path configuration but only php-cli could send emails.

For my environment, Mailcatcher works on a distant server and I use the catchmail command to contact it.

Here is the sendmail_path I used:

sendmail_path = /usr/bin/env catchmail --smtp-ip mailcatcher-ip -f [email protected]

For the fpm php.ini file, I had to specify the full path to catchmail for the mail function to work correctly:

sendmail_path = /usr/bin/env /usr/local/bin/catchmail --smtp-ip mailcatcher -f [email protected]

Answer 2

If you use Mac OS Sierra or later:
here is the right place of catchmail:

change sendmail_path = /usr/bin/env catchmail -f [email protected]
By sendmail_path = /usr/local/bin/catchmail -f [email protected].