Failed to connect to mailserver at “localhost” port 25

Question

I keep getting this error when I try to send an e-mail in PHP:

Warning: mail() [function.mail]: Failed to connect to mailserver at \"localhost\" port 25, ver         


        

Answer 1

You need to be running a mail server locally. If this is Unix, enable sendmail If this is Windows install the Simple Mail Transfer Server (not sure if the name is correct) component of IIs. E.g. for windows 2003 follow this: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/8b83ac7t.aspx

Answer 2

On windows, nearly all AMPP (Apache,MySQL,PHP,PHPmyAdmin) packages don't include a mail server (but nearly all naked linuxes do have!). So, when using PHP under windows, you need to setup a mail server!

Imo the best and most simple tool ist this: http://smtp4dev.codeplex.com/

SMTP4Dev is a simple one-file mail server tool that does collect the mails it send (so it does not really sends mail, it just keeps them for development). Perfect tool.