546626 - drumbeat.stage.mozilla.com: Cannot create user accounts due to mail server problem

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(mozilla.org Graveyard :: Server Operations, task)

Description

[Matt Thompson]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.5; en-US; rv:1.9.2) Gecko/20100115 Firefox/3.6
Build Identifier: Mozilla Drumbeat staging site

1) When trying to add a new user account, Drupal displays the error message "Unable to send e-mail. Please contact site administrator"
http://drumbeat.stage.mozilla.com/user/register
2) According to Mike Haggerty from Trellon: "This message is generated by Drupal when it cannot find a mail server."
3) "Someone needs to check the settings for PHP and make sure it points at a valid mail server and has access to send."


Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.register for new users account
http://drumbeat.stage.mozilla.com/user/register
2. receive error message

Actual Results:  
Error message: "Unable to send e-mail. Please contact site administrator"

Expected Results:  
Return green message: "Your password and further instructions have been sent to your email address."

We urgently needs this issue resolved so that we can meet our deployment deadline today

Comment 1

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

This worked until recently. However, I personally am not sure how, because the installation instructions (https://wiki.mozilla.org/Drumbeat/Website/Install) don't mention how to set up mail. Yet it must have been set up, since it was working!

We need to find out why Drupal is unable to send mail. I hope that Drupal has logged a more detailed error to a system log file, however a bit of Googling reveals no clear answer on which one it uses. 

Someone with access to the server needs to log in, reproduce the error and then check the log files in /var/log to see if any of them give us more information.

We will attempt to get more details from Trellon on how exactly the email is supposed to work. In the mean time, attaching a copy of the staging server's global php.ini file to this bug would also be appreciated.

Gerv

Comment 2

[Jeremy Orem [:oremj]]

Does it work now? I can send mail from the command line.

Comment 3

[Matt Thompson]

Thanks Jeremy!

* The error message no longer appears when creating new user accounts or requesting password changes
* But the confirmation email message successfully arrives for some users, but not for other users
* For gmail accounts, confirmation message arrives successfully in spam folder
* But for non-gmail accounts, have been unable to receive confirmation email.
* Wondering what smtp server we're using?

Comment 4

[Mark Surman]

Jeremy: thanks for taking a shot at this. 

I also note w/ few mails getting through that they are from '[e-mail]'. 

Maybe that's getting spam filters. Either way, should be from an alias that's something like [e-mail] or @mozillafoundation.org, at least for now.

Comment 5

[Michael Haggerty]

Hey guys - 

I corrected the email address for the site - there is a web based interface for setting the return address for messages sent from the site (the link 'Site Information' in the admin).

In regards to the mailer issue - the site should be sending emails all the time. The error we have been seeing indicates the problem is with the php configuration, not with Drupal itself. There is no 'setting' in the application telling it which mail gateway to use. 

What is the mail server messages are supposed to be going through? Is PHP configured to use that gateway? Is sendmail on the staging server? 

It would be helpful to see a php.ini file at this point.

M

Comment 6

[Jeremy Orem [:oremj]]

Not sure it is worth a lot of effort to make sure staging e-mails don't end up in spam folders. Anyways, Gerv has access now and can get you php.ini.

Comment 7

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

This is now fixed, using band-aids and string. Other bugs are open on a more permanent solution.

Gerv