phpmailer error "Could not instantiate mail function"

Question

I'm using the mail() basic example modified slightly for my user id and I'm getting the error "Mailer Error: Could not instantiate mail function"

if I use the mail function -

mail($to, $subject, $message, $headers); 

it works fine, though I'm having trouble sending html, which is why I'm trying PHPMailer.

this is the code:

<?php require_once('../class.phpmailer.php');      $mail             = new PHPMailer(); // defaults to using php "mail()"     $body             = file_get_contents('contents.html');     $body             = eregi_replace("[\]",'',$body);         print ($body ); // to verify that I got the html     $mail->AddReplyTo("[email protected]","my name");     $mail->SetFrom('[email protected]', 'my name');     $address = "[email protected]";     $mail->AddAddress($address, "her name");     $mail->Subject    = "PHPMailer Test Subject via mail(), basic";     $mail->AltBody    = "To view the message, please use an HTML compatible email viewer!";     $mail->MsgHTML($body);     $mail->AddAttachment("images/phpmailer.gif");      // attachment     $mail->AddAttachment("images/phpmailer_mini.gif"); // attachment      if(!$mail->Send()) {         echo "Mailer Error: " . $mail->ErrorInfo;     } else {         echo "Message sent!";     } ?> 

Answer 1

Try using SMTP to send email:-

$mail->IsSMTP(); $mail->Host = "smtp.example.com";  // optional // used only when SMTP requires authentication   $mail->SMTPAuth = true; $mail->Username = 'smtp_username'; $mail->Password = 'smtp_password'; 

Answer 2

Your code looks good, did you forget to install PostFix on your server?

sudo apt-get install postfix 

It worked for me ;)

Cheers