How to Properly Configure Sendmail in a Local Environment

I have found the way to send e-mails via Gmail. It can be done with mail() function in a console:

php -r "mail('[email protected]', 'Subject', 'Body');"

If to call mail() via php file, e-mails won’t be sent and it means that Magento won’t send anything.

Installing and Setting up Sendmail

1. Check if it wasn’t installed before with the command ls -la `which sendmail`
2. If not, use the command sudo apt-get install sendmail
3. When the installing is finished run the command sudo sendmailconfig
4. Open etc/hosts:

   127.0.0.1 localhost.loc Name
   127.0.1.1 Name

   (get the name from here)

5. Specify the local hosts’ names, Sendmail will receive requests of e-mail sending from these names. Point them in the file /etc/mail/local-host-names:

   localhost.loc
   Name

6. Then you have to add several lines to the file /etc/mail/sendmail.mc to send e-mails via Gmail. Add the lines above MAILER parameters, otherwise, you’ll get an error in configuration.

   define(`SMART_HOST',`smtp.gmail.com')dnl
   define(`confAUTH_MECHANISMS', `EXTERNAL GSSAPI DIGEST-MD5 CRAM-MD5 LOGIN PLAIN')dnl
   define(`RELAY_MAILER',`esmtp')dnl
   define(`RELAY_MAILER_ARGS', `TPC $h 587')dnl
   FEATURE(`authinfo',`hash /etc/mail/auth/client-info')dnl

7. Create the folder /etc/mail/auth. Add the file client-info to it, this file will store the login and the password for [email protected].

   # mkdir /etc/mail/auth 
   # touch /etc/mail/client-info

8. Add to the file client-info your authorization parameters (change my.name to your login as well as password):

   AuthInfo:smtp.gmail.com "U:root" "I:my.name" "P:password" "M:PLAIN"
   AuthInfo:smtp.gmail.com:587 "U:root" "I:my.name" "P:password" "M:PLAIN"

9. Make this file/folder accessible only for a root user for security purposes:

   # chmod 600 /etc/mail/auth/client-info
   # chmod 700 /etc/mail/auth

10. Transform the file into the needed format:

    # makemap -r hash /etc/mail/auth/client-info.db < /etc/mail/auth/client-info

11. Do the assembling of configuration files for Sendmail:

    # cd /etc/mail
    # make

12. Restart MTA (mail transfer agent) and your server to apply changes:

    sudo /etc/init.d/sendmail restart (/etc/init.d/sendmail reload)
    sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

Testing e-mail sending

Use the terminal for testing:

telnet localhost smtp

We should get:

Trying 127.0.0.1…
Connected to localhost.
Escape character is ‘^]’.
220 localhost.loc ESMTP Sendmail 8.14.4/8.14.4/Debian-4.1ubuntu1; Sat, 26 Jul 2014 21:46:56 +0300; (No UCE/UBE) logging access from: localhost(OK)-localhost [127.0.0.1]

Start the testing by inserting hello localhost.
Response 250 localhost.loc Hello localhost [127.0.0.1], pleased to meet you.

Then the commands and responses alternate:

mail from: [email protected] 
250 2.1.0 [email protected]… Sender ok

rcpt to: [email protected] 
250 2.1.5 [email protected]… Recipient ok

data 
354 Enter mail, end with “.” on a line by itself

Insert the text of a test e-mail, be sure to end it with a point:

test message
.

Press Enter and get the response:

250 2.0.0 s6QItc6L010145 Message accepted for delivery

Now, you have to setup the mail client to get [email protected] sent/received e-mails from the website.
Set up Thunderbird first. Open Create > Others accounts. Choose Unix Mailspool (Movemail) account’s type, press Next. Enter a name and specify e-mail [email protected]. Then press Next till the step Done. If everything is done properly, you’ll see the test letter in the inbox.

Sending via php mail()

Open /etc/php/5.6/apache2/php.ini

Remove commenting sendmail_path and add = /usr/sbin/sendmail -t -i to it.
Then check apachectl -t. If everything is ok, do a restart.
You can run the test via the terminal:

php -r "mail('[email protected]', 'Subject', 'Body');"