email failures with OJS

[waynej]

This is probably not a problem with OJS.
It seems more likely that it has to do with our server configuration.
But any help would be most appreciated.

Emails generated by OJS fail to leave our domain.
"Internal" emails are sucessful but "external" emails are not delivered.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

- Wayne

[asmecher]

Hi Wayne,

This is probably your local mail setup. By default, OJS uses the local sendmail binary to send emails. If you'd like to use a separate SMTP server, check the [email] section in your config.inc.php configuration file for the relevant options.

Regards,
Alec Smecher
Open Journal Systems Team

[Alistair]

Hi,

I am having problems sending email also. I am using Apache 2.0 with MySQL 4.1.7 PHP 4.3.10. The version of OJS is 2.0.1.0

The email works fine for the site overall but I can't get any email out from OJS. The only configuration in config.inc.php for OJS that I can find is the allow_envelope_sender variable.

So is there some other setting that might need to be tweaked?

Cheers

Alistair Campbell
Townsville Qld

[asmecher]

Hi Alistair,

OJS 2.0.1 doesn't support sending email via an external SMTP server. This support was added in OJS 2.0.2, but I'd suggest upgrading to the most recent release -- currently OJS 2.1.0-1. Once you've done that, check the smtp, smtp_server, smtp_port, smtp_auth, smtp_username, and smtp_password options.

Regards,
Alec Smecher
Open Journal Systems Team

[Alistair]

Hi Alec,

where are these options? in OJS or PHP.ini?

I have upgraded to OJS 2.1.0 but can't see any of those variables in OJS.

Alistair

[asmecher]

Hi Alistair,

Those options should be in your OJS config.inc.php file. If you don't see them there, it may be because you're using a configuration file from an older version of OJS; check in config.TEMPLATE.inc.php for usage information.

Regards,
Alec Smecher
Open Journal Systems Team

[Alistair]

Thanks Alec, you might need to upgrade the info on upgrade as it reads

- Move or copy the following files and directories from your current OJS
installation:
- config.inc.php

which seems to imply that you just re-use the old config file.

I take it that I need to copy the info from the old config file into the new version?

cheers

Alistair

[asmecher]

Hi Alistair,

See further down the list in docs/UPGRADE:

Code: Select all

    - Be sure to review the Configuration Changes section of the release notes
      in docs/release-notes/README-(version) for all versions between your
      original version and the new version. You may need to manually add
      new items to your config.inc.php file.

Since you upgraded from OJS 2.0.1 to OJS 2.1.0, you'll need to check the following files:

• docs/release-notes/README-2.0.2
• docs/release-notes/README-2.1.0

Regards,
Alec Smecher
Open Journal Systems Team

[Alistair]

Thanks Alec,

not much of a reader I am afraid!

Ta

Alistair

[asmecher]

No problem -- frankly, I write more documentation than I read.

Regards,
Alec Smecher
Open Journal Systems Team

[Alistair]

Thanks a bunch Alec.

All up and working. Very easy once you pointed the stuff out.

Alistair

[mrich]

Our university is moving to a system on April 17th where they will require that people sending email "authenticate" using a UW NetID and password. Since our university is also our ISP for our journal, this will affect outgoing mail from our OJS server.

Campus C&C suggests the following settings:

SMTP Server name: smtp.washington.edu
Authentication (login): ON, using UW NetID and password
Secure Connection: ON, (e.g., using SSL or STARTTLS)
Port: 587 recommended, 25 permitted, 465 as a last resort

I've tried entering the appropriate values of smtp_server, smtp_username, smtp_password and smtp_port into the appropriate locations in the config.inc.php file, but so far no joy.

I also set smtp = On, and tried both smtp_auth= PLAIN and LOGIN without success. Any test messages I tried sending then never went through.

As soon as I turn smtp=Off, the mail works fine again, but our days are clearly numbered.

My current theory is that our mailserver wants SSL enabled, and it's not clear to me how to do this with OJS. If I change set force_ssl = On or force_login_ssl = On, will that also enable SSL for email?

Regards,

Mike Richardson
UW Radiology
Radiology Case Reports

[asmecher]

Hi Mike,

force_ssl only affects the HTTP connection with the user's browser. You may be able to get OJS to use an SSL connection to the mail server by using ssl://my.smtp.server.name for the smtp_server setting (with smtp enabled); this is untested but should work, so please report your results here.

Regards,
Alec Smecher
Open Journal Systems Team

[mrich]

Thanks, Alec -- I'll give it a try today.