CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

So what happens is the following: Testing goes well all the way until the credit card is charged, at which point the donor gets the following error. Note that I have pasted both versions as we tested Sendmail and SMTP functionality. For both of those, the test email works perfectly and it is received successfully. All the settings are indeed correct, how have people resolved this matter in the past? I see a lot of posts with these or similar errors but never a resolution posted:

SMTP Errors
An error occurred when CiviCRM attempted to send an email (via SMTP). If you received this error after submitting on online contribution or event registration - the transaction was completed, but we were unable to send the email receipt.

The mail library returned the following error message:
Failed to add recipient: @localhost [SMTP: recipient is not recognized (code: 501, response: <@localhost>: no local part)]

This is probably related to a problem in your Outbound Email Settings (Administer CiviCRM » Global Settings » Outbound Email), OR the FROM email address specifically configured for your contribution page or event. Possible causes are:

Your SMTP Username or Password are incorrect.
Your SMTP Server (machine) name is incorrect.
You need to use a Port other than the default port 25 in your environment.
Your SMTP server is just not responding right now (it is down for some reason).
The FROM Email Address configured for this feature may not be a valid sender based on your email service provider rules.
Check this page for more information.

Sendmail Errors:
An error occurred when CiviCRM attempted to send an email (via SMTP). If you received this error after submitting on online contribution or event registration - the transaction was completed, but we were unable to send the email receipt.

The mail library returned the following error message:
sendmail returned error code 1

This is probably related to a problem in your Outbound Email Settings (Administer CiviCRM » Global Settings » Outbound Email), OR the FROM email address specifically configured for your contribution page or event. Possible causes are:

Your Sendmail path is incorrect.
Your Sendmail argument is incorrect.
The FROM Email Address configured for this feature may not be a valid sender based on your email service provider rules.
Check this page for more information.

Considering we need to deploy this CiviCRM and its CiviContribute functionality as soon as possible, does it make more sense for us to downgrade the testing site from version from 3.0.1 (which is what we are evaluating) to something else? I love the easy donation page that we can create with it with multiple choices of amounts and custom amounts fields and we have been searching for this functionality in Drupal for so long now, but I have been unable to fix the Outbound Mail problems so far and it seems that it may be isolated to the CiviContribute donations functionality as the server is sending mail successfully via other Drupal modules and normal functionality. We would be willing to hire a consultant to fix this for us if needed. I would need a direct email with fee/hr and availability in the NYC area. PM me or reply if you want my email via PM.

OK guys I still have not been able to resolve this matter and I am not the only one. I like CiviCRM a lot so far, but honestly, it is really hard to recommend, implement and support these open source solutions when we run into problems like this one and there's no one to turn to for solutions. I am unfortunately not a SSH guru so the IRC contact suggestion that Lobo posted earlier is foreign to me, I don't even know how to get started doing that. Here's a bit of additional information on our setup:

Host: Midphase
PHP Version: 5.2.6
Apache Version: 2.2.10 (Unix)
Path to sendmail /usr/sbin/sendmail

Our host provides access to our server settings via CPanel and WHM so it would be really great to get some sort of steps to follow in that sort of environment to test and troubleshoot why we are getting these errors with CiviContribute only as some other users have reported.

In the few weeks I have worked with CiviCRM I have recommended it to some other developers for evaluation as I think it is unique in what it offers to non-profit sites. Our problem is pressing because the site is live and we are already accepting donations without the automated email confirmation on completion until this issue is resolved, but for now we have to manually check for new contributions and generate an email to the donor ourselves when the site is well equipped to handle the task, it just doesn't work as it should.

We are in the new york city area and unfortunately are in a budget, so I have to try to resolve this myself with the help of the forum experts.

We'll give this another shot "remotely"...

1. Confirm that you can do the following successfully:
- Login to Drupal
- Go to Administer CiviCRM >> Configure >> Global Settings >> Outbound Email
- Review your SMTP settings, and assuming they look correct click Save and Send Test Email
- You should receive a test email in your inbox - at the email address entered for your CiviCRM contact record (that is the contact record linked to your Drupal user account).

2. IF this works, now let's confirm the FROM address used in the "Send Test Email" task - just check and note down the exact FROM info in the test email you received.
- You can also confirm this "Default FROM Email Address" by navigating to Administer CiviCRM >> Configure >> FROM Email Addresses

3. Now let's check the FROM email address used when Contribution confirmation emails are sent.
- Navigate to Administer CiviCRM >> CiviContribute >> Manage Contribution Pages
- Click "Configure" action for your live contribution page.
- Click "Thankyou and Receipting"
- Scroll down to the "Receipt from Name" and "Receipt from Email" fields. Set the name and email address to exactly the same values as the name and email address you noted down in step 2 above (since we've seen that our host allows us to use this as our FROM address).

If this doesn't resolve things - I think your best bet is to communicate with Midphase and ask them for guidance (give them the exact error messages and the FROM email address, as well as the SMTP settings you are using).

Dave, your steps worked but the interesting thing is that I didn't have to change anything at all as they had been saved from my previous attempts when I had the errors. One thing that changed was that we restarted the server a few times since the last time I tested this. In any case, the problem seems to be resolved now. Thanks so much.

We'll give this another shot "remotely"...

1. Confirm that you can do the following successfully:
- Login to Drupal
- Go to Administer CiviCRM >> Configure >> Global Settings >> Outbound Email
- Review your SMTP settings, and assuming they look correct click Save and Send Test Email
- You should receive a test email in your inbox - at the email address entered for your CiviCRM contact record (that is the contact record linked to your Drupal user account).

2. IF this works, now let's confirm the FROM address used in the "Send Test Email" task - just check and note down the exact FROM info in the test email you received.
- You can also confirm this "Default FROM Email Address" by navigating to Administer CiviCRM >> Configure >> FROM Email Addresses

3. Now let's check the FROM email address used when Contribution confirmation emails are sent.
- Navigate to Administer CiviCRM >> CiviContribute >> Manage Contribution Pages
- Click "Configure" action for your live contribution page.
- Click "Thankyou and Receipting"
- Scroll down to the "Receipt from Name" and "Receipt from Email" fields. Set the name and email address to exactly the same values as the name and email address you noted down in step 2 above (since we've seen that our host allows us to use this as our FROM address).

If this doesn't resolve things - I think your best bet is to communicate with Midphase and ask them for guidance (give them the exact error messages and the FROM email address, as well as the SMTP settings you are using).

Jacob - what do you mean by "their email has been deleted"? Best to start another forum post with as much detail about the problem as you can provide.

- Config of contribution page (payment processor, profile(s) used, pay later enabled, etc.). Maybe include link to page and/or screenshot.
- Exact error message and subsequent results  (i.e. contact record is / is not created, required data there or not, contribution record created or not, etc.)
- Can you recreate it? If so, exact steps...
- If not, best ideas about when it happens (what combination of conditions).

Replying to oneself.

This behaviour is a result of NOT including a REGISTRATION profile in the contribution page! Not a Bug!

However may I make one small suggestion.  That contribution pages FORCE one to go through each step, step by step rather than  step 1 > save > back to manage contribution page > step 2 > save > back to manage contribution page > step 2 > save > back to manage contribution page. ..

Didn't this used to be the default behaviour?

davej:

can u investigate as to why including the registration profile throws an error? seems like a wierd combination (and is a bug)

bails: the contribution page always made the user step thru the process. we'll switch it to the event flow format in a future release

lobo