Posted by Brent Baisley on 10/14/05 15:58

Just about any mail server will accept mail from anywhere for local
delivery. But if you are not sending email to a user account local to
that mail server, the mail server is going to want you to
authenticate. Without authentication, the mail server would be an
open relay (no security), which is how spam gets around.

Some mail servers are setup to allow any email to go out as long as
it originates locally, like PHP running on the mail server or the
local network. This is still a limited open relay (weak security),
since it can be compromised by spoofing. The built-in PHP mail()
function does not currently support authentication, so you would not
be able to use a mail server that hasn't been setup for your computer
to send email without authenticating.

What you should look into is the PHPMailer class, which supports SMTP
authentication.
http://phpmailer.sourceforge.net/

I probably should have just said this first instead of giving a
tutorial.

On Oct 13, 2005, at 7:52 PM, Todd Cary wrote:

> I have a Linux server on my network, however my main mail is
> handled by Thunderbird on my PC which uses my ISP's SMTP server
> (UserName and PW). Can I configure SendMail to send mail to my
> ISP's SMTP server using the built in mail() function of PHP?
>
> If I use one of the Mail Classes, I can do it and on my client's
> Linux server, mail() works (but they are not using an outside SMTP
> server).
>
> Many thanks...
>
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>
>
>

--
Brent Baisley
Systems Architect
Landover Associates, Inc.
Search & Advisory Services for Advanced Technology Environments
p: 212.759.6400/800.759.0577

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