CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

I hope I can help you, I will try!  I have struggled with SMTP errors myself.  The SMTP function uses a PHP extension called "PEAR" which is included in the CiviCRM install.   It appears that PEAR is not authenticating as I see in this here, but maybe not for the reason you think!

pear_error: message="Authentication failed."

I'm going to assume that you have checked that your SMTP:

• mailserver setting (for instance mail.mysite.com)
• mail user (for instance mymail+mysite.com)
• password
  

...are all set correctly?  Double check in a mail client like Thunderbird or Outlook Express first.

Ok, now assuming you've gotten that far and PEAR SMTP is still not authenticating, you're going to have to look at your system email settings. 

1. I'm not familiar with version 1.9, so just find out where you set your "Domain Settings" in the CiviCRM Administration and set that all email addresses to the same email as your outgoing SMTP account email.

2. Then go to (if it exists in 1.9) "From Emails" and add a from email, if it doesn't already exist, and set that to the same email address as the Domain Settings and your SMTP account email.

3. Then finally go and set your drupal admin user account that you yourself are logged into the system and set your user account email to the same email address.

4. So to review, your Drupal user account, SMTP outgoing server settings, custom "From address" and your "Domain Settings" email should all be the exact same email address.  Now run the test for SMTP server settings again through CiviCRM.

If THAT doesn't work then try to test that PEAR email works at all on your webhost.

This is a sample script, make sure to fill in your settings appropriately for email username and password, then upload this as a .php file called "smtptesting.php" or something to your public_html (web root) directory.

Your path to PEAR mail appears to be either here:
/var/www/vhosts/kabissa.org/httpdocs/sites/all/modules/civicrm/packages/
or here:
/var/www/vhosts/kabissa.org/httpdocs/sites/all/modules/civicrm/CRM/Utils/

<?php

require_once "<<path to PEAR Mail.php>>Mail.php";

$from ="you <you@yoursite.com>";

// try some different email recipients here?
$to = "you <you@yoursite.com>";

$subject = "Hi - smtp t3sst sending!";
$body = "Hi,\n\nHow are smtp thing working you?";

$host = "mail.yoursite.com";
$username = "yourmail+yoursite.com";
$password = "passwordhere";

$headers = array ('From' => $from,
  'To' => $to,
  'Subject' => $subject);
$smtp = Mail::factory('smtp',
  array ('host' => $host,
    'auth' => true,
    'username' => $username,
    'password' => $password));

$mail = $smtp->send($to, $headers, $body);

if (PEAR::isError($mail)) {
  echo("<p>" . $mail->getMessage() . "</p>");
 } else {
  echo("<p>Message successfully sent!</p>");
 }
?>

And if that smtptesting.php page doesn't work when you bring it up in a browser like so: www.yoursite.com/smtptesting.php it means PEAR isn't installed right on your server or there is some kind of hosting restriction.

Good luck!

Oh ok, your PEAR Mail extension is in the wrong place, and efforts of one PEAR File to include another PEAR File are failing.  This really confused me at first when I ran into this problem.   These errors are not a failure for SMTP to validate, it's a failure of PEAR to find the files to make itself work.

#1 Option:  Your php.ini file has an "include_path" in it, where all PHP extensions are looked for by PHP.  Your PEAR Mail extension must be installed in this directory.  To find out where your include path is use phpinfo(); on a PHP page and look for include_path and copy your PEAR Mail files there

#2 Option: within PHP script itself set_include_path() http://us.php.net/set_include_path

#3 Option: one at a time, handle the "failed to open stream" errors by copying the required files into the directory the script is looking for.  This will result in a lot of duplication of files but it will eventually work.  It's messy, try to go with #1 and #2 first.

You are not to change the  root in your civicrm.settings.php file.

Copy the PEAR Mail .php files to your php.ini include_path.  This should have no effect on your CiviCRM code path

Hi,

I finally fixed my problem after many days of struggle. The problem revealed itself when I followed the instructions on this page to turn on the Smarty Debug Window:

Smarty Debug Window - Loads all variables available to the current page template into a pop-up
window. To trigger, add '&smartyDebug=1' to any CiviCRM URL query string.

It turns out that civicrm for some unknown reason was using the SMTP password we used to use on the old server, and not the new one. The password set in the civicrm.settings.php file is being ignored. Any ideas why this might be happening?

Thanks for the help,

Tobias

Hi Lobo,

In 1.9 (on my system) only the server and username is configured at the URL you provided (see attached screenshot). The password is (or used to be) stored in civicrm.settings.php. I changed this when I moved to Media Temple, but civicrm ignored the change in the settings.

I'm not sure what's going on, but in any case I think I'm good to go for the moment - thanks for the input.

Cheers,

Tobias