Unable to relay

[abonnell]

Hello,

I went thru your entire formmail forum and didn't see anything about this. Well, maybe something similiar, but not quite. I am setting up another domains website on their own server with their own email server. If I set formmail up to send to anyone@theirdomain.com then it works successfully. If I set it up to send to anyother@whateverdomain.com then I get the following error.

Warning: mail(): SMTP server response: 550 5.7.1 Unable to relay for me@mydomain.org in c:\inetpub\wwwroot\formmail.php on line 2994
An error occurred while processing the form.

The following is from my formmail.php:

$TARGET_EMAIL = array(EMAIL_NAME."@vintegrate\.org$",
"^xxxxxx@xxxxxx\.com$");

The following is in my html form:

<input type="hidden" name="recipients" value="me@mydomain.org" />

Thanks for providing so much support, it is greatly appreciated.

[russellr]

Hi,

This is purely a server issue - basically your server refuses to send to anyone outside the domain from PHP.

You can probably get around this by setting 'sendmail_from' in the 'php.ini' file to a valid email address in the domain. If you don't have access to php.ini, you get FormMail to set this by changing:

define("INI_SET_FROM",false); 

to

define("INI_SET_FROM",true); 

But read documentation above that setting for full details (around line 1437 in formmail.php).

[abonnell]

It seems that the information you provided says that my php.ini is setup incorrectly. Additionally, the directions say to change the from fields as to trick my email server. This is another form of relaying, which the email server doesn't allow. I think I'll have to find a way to allow that one particular address to have authority to send emails only to one address. I'm not sure if this is even possible. Do I sound like I'm on the right track? On another note, does that mean that everyone that is able to successfully use the mailer have an open relay? I'm using IIS 6 and Exchange 2003, I'll research more and check back here.

I will say that I'm using some advanced features on another site that sends to an email within the domain and I really like the application, excellent work.

Thanks again.

[abonnell]

Sorry, I forgot to mention that I have access to php.ini and it is setup correctly. The sendmail_from looks good and the SMTP is set correctly. It sends successfully as long as the recipient is within the domain.

[russellr]

Hi,

AFAIK an "open relay" is where an external computer can connect to your mail server and send mail to arbitrary addresses. This is what spammers want.

My view is that you're sending from your server and why wouldn't it let you email anyone you like?

Now, I have seen some servers that refuse to send if the "from" or sender address isn't in the server's domain. That seems a little over the top, but it is reasonable. In particular, Yahoo servers enforce this.

This is probably what's happening for you.

By default, what FormMail does is set the "from" address to the email of the form submitter (the email field) - this is for your convenience.

You can use the "mail_options" setting in your form to get FormMail to use a particular "from" address instead. Like this:

<input type="hidden" name="mail_options" value="FromAddr=you@yourdomain.com" />

Put in your email address that's valid on the server. Try that and see if it works.

[abonnell]

OK, I found the resolution that I was looking for. How to resolve? Requires access to active directory users and computers with email tabs. Create a new user that will be the local domain mailer account. Create a contact that has an external email address. Set the new user to forward his mails to the external account. More info can be found here...

http://www.msexchange.org/tutorials/MF015.html

I'm going to blame it on sleep deprivation as to why I didn't do that to begin with. I have the email server locked down tighter than something really tight. Sorry for the bother, I really do like your application. Thanks alot for making available for free and including the support documentation and forum.

Sincerely,

Adam