note 54340 added to ref.mail

When I tried to send email out from PHP script, I kept getting the following message, for all kinds of reasons. Warning: mail(): "sendmail_from" not set in php.ini or custom "From:" header missing in D:\htdocs\mailout.php on line 7 Before I finally made mail() work, I did lots of things, something good, others useless. The most difficult part was that no matter what I did, the error message was all the same, until it finally works. If you see the message above, and you are running Apache on Windows first time, as I did, my experience might help you. (1) First of all, make sure that you have a SMTP server is running. If you don't have a SMTP installed, you get the same "From header" error message. Use "Settings" - "Control Panel" - "Administrative Tools" - "Services". You should see your Apache running there. Look for "Simple Mail Transport Protocol (SMTP)", it is the SMTP server from Microsoft. (2) After install SMTP server, for easy testing, config it openly, that means everyone can use it. Remember to change SMTP config to limit the access when you are done. To test, you can use an email client to use your SMTP server's IP, and try to send out an email. Or you can use telnet to talk with your SMTP server. Microsoft has on-line help page about it: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;836500#5d However, in the page the "rcpt" command is misspelled as "rpct", which results in 'unknown command' error message. That help page also has some security advice. (3) Config your PHP. After installing Apache, there is no php.ini put in use. It runs happily with its defaults. Find the "php.ini-dist" file, which has all the default values, and the PHP doc says that it is for development environment, need to tight up security when go production. What we need to set is the SMTP server address, and the "From" thing. For me, they are: SMTP = 192.168.1.25 Sendmail_from = mailmaster@mydomain.com I didn't touch the default port 25. Save the changed version as php.ini, because that is the name of the PHP config file Apache cares. (4) Reboot you Apache server, so the php.ini can take effect. (5) Here is the D:\htdocs\mailout.php test page I used. <?PHP $to = 'myaccount@freemail.com' ; $subject = "smtp testing."; $message = "Hi, there."; mail($to, $subject, $message); ?> (6) change SMTP config to limit the access, nobody want to help spammers. ---- Manual Page -- http://www.php.net/manual/en/ref.mail.php Edit -- http://master.php.net/manage/user-notes.php?action=edit+54340 Delete: added to the manual -- http://master.php.net/manage/user-notes.php?action=delete+54340&report=yes&reason=added+to+the+manual Delete: bad code -- http://master.php.net/manage/user-notes.php?action=delete+54340&report=yes&reason=bad+code Delete: spam -- http://master.php.net/manage/user-notes.php?action=delete+54340&report=yes&reason=spam Delete: useless -- http://master.php.net/manage/user-notes.php?action=delete+54340&report=yes&reason=useless Delete: non-english -- http://master.php.net/manage/user-notes.php?action=delete+54340&report=yes&reason=non-english Delete: other reasons -- http://master.php.net/manage/user-notes.php?action=delete+54340&report=yes Reject -- http://master.php.net/manage/user-notes.php?action=reject+54340&report=yes Search -- http://master.php.net/manage/user-notes.php