Sending e-mail via PHP and MSMTP

Normally I would have set up a fully-fledged mailing systems like Postfix or Sendmail to handle my mailing needs. This means spending hours configuring, tweaking and securing another service running on my server. But I have found a simpler way.

MSMTP.

1. Install MSMTP. In Ubuntu you would do the following:
   
   

   sudo apt-get install msmtp ca-certificates

2. Edit the configuration file /etc/msmtprc with the following:
   
   

   #set defaults
   defaults
   
   # Enable or disable TLS/SSL encryption
   tls off
   tls_starttls on
   tls_trust_file /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt
   
   # account settings
   account default
   host mail.optusnet.com.au # CHANGE THIS!!!
   port 25
   auth off
   from do-not-reply@domain.com.au
   logfile /var/log/msmtp/msmtp.log

3. Edit the configuration of PHP to use MSMTP. Edit the configuration file with the following (in Ubuntu and PHP5, the file is stored in /etc/php5/cli/php.ini
   
   

   sendmail_path = /usr/bin/msmtp -t

4. Create the log file directory and set proper permissions (depends on how your machine is set up:
   
   

   sudo mkdir /var/log/msmtp
   sudo chown [user]:[group] /var/log/msmtp

5. Tell our system to rotate the logs so that they do not get too large by creating the file /etc/logrotate.d/msmtp:
   

   /var/log/msmtp/*.log {
   

   rotate 12
   monthly
   compress
   missingok
   notifempty
   
   }

6. You can now test it with the following PHP script:
   
   

   <?php
   $to = "your-email@domain.com";
   $subject = "Test mail";
   $message = "Hello! This is a simple email message.";
   if (mail($to,$subject,$message)) {
       echo "Mail Sent.";
   } else {
       echo "NOT SENT.";
   }

References:

• http://askubuntu.com/questions/47609/how-to-have-my-php-send-mail