Sendmail and cgiemail

[oxfordian3]

I am starting to use the Apache web server on my OS X 10.3.2 system, and have trouble using cgiemail (the HTML-form to email utility). I am using it locally to test webpages before publishing them on the real host.

I downloaded the script, and got the WebServer configured successfully. The script reports success, but no email gets delivered.

I never access email natively on my Mac, but I think cgiemail calls the sendmail program. When I try doing that from a command-line, it just gives the error:

postdrop: warning: unable to look up public/pickup: No such file or directory

Any pointers for using cgiemail on the OS X WebServer? Is sendmail a reliable tool in OS X, or a waste of time? Is there a good place to get instruction on configuring it?

thanks!
ox3

 

[raytube]

Hi,
As far as I'm aware it's actually a program called Postfix that's used to send mail under 10.3. It was Sendmail under 10.2 but it was changed. I know this is true relating to sending mail via PHP. There also both disabled by default but if you look on sourceforge you'll find an application that will enable either one.
What I've found (using PHP mail function anyway) is that it looks like the mail is going but it actually doesn't, it shows no error. I am guessing this is the same problem, that Postfix isn't enabled.

Hope that helps!

Rick

 

[raytube]

Hi,
I found a link:

http://www.roadstead.com/weblog/Tutorials/PostfixEnabler.html

Cheers,

Rick

 

[oxfordian3]

Thanks

Thanks, that looks helpful.

I'll try it out and see if I can confirm that I have some kind of native mail operational. It's a second question whether cgiemail knows to use the enabled mail utility. Then again, cgiemail comes with all the source code, so i can look for myself.

cheers,
ox3

 

[oxfordian3]

More on cgiemail

After a couple weeks hiatus, I got back to this project and did indeed get sendmail to work on my system. The PostFix Enabler did most of the job, and now smtp sends mail to my ISP's smtp port and mail works. What's more, my test version of a simple cgiemail HTML form works, when I place it at the top level directory of my computer's website.

But I'm still having problems getting cgiemail to work from a web page that is not in the main host web directory of my computer. If I just copy cgiemail to a local cgi-bin subdirectory of a website on my machine, it doesn't respond. I have not even been able to get the main USER website at ~User/Sites to connect to cgiemail.

Should the cgiemail script be able to operate from a locally designated cgi-bin directory, beneath your websites home directory? I've been using the standard old MIT instructions -- can anyone point me to some other references?

 

[raytube]

Hi,
I think that must be some kind of issue relating to cgiemail, I've never used it so I can't give any advice there. My experience is with PHP and have found that to work fine.
Interestingly I had the same issue with a client of mine recently who solved it by upgrading to 10.3 (going from sendmail to postfix), however the email worked from PHP without having to run the postfix enabler! So there does seem to be some issues between 10.2 and 10.3 there.

Cheers,

Rick

 

[oxfordian3]

Using FormMail

Thanks. I switched over to using the Perl implementation of FormMail, and that works well.