Chamilo 1.11.32 Email not sent (Announcement + Password Reset)

[tenchiro]

New semester just started and realized Chamilo Announcement could not send email. I couldn't remember having the issue last semester so I can only claim that the current email is not working (v. 1.11.32). I have used Chamilo for many years, and Announcement has always worked.

Webmail on my webhost (Bluehost) works. I did find the #4764 and look inside (app/config/mail.conf.php). Bluehost seemed to be using 'mail' (and not SMTP, as their server is not Windows-based.)

I am not sure what else to try... (my class now has no email).

Any assistance or suggestions for things to try would be much appreciated.

By the way, Students have feedback that password reset request also did not sent any reply.

Thanks
CSLoh

[ywarnier]

Hi @tenchiro
In mail.conf.php, you have a line $platform_email['SMTP_DEBUG'] = 0;.
When your portal is not in use by students, try setting that to 1, then going to /main/admin/email_tester.php on your Chamilo portal and sending an e-mail to you.
When the debug option is set to 1, you should see a fair amount of information about the e-mail sending process and an indication of what's not working.
This will usually tell you that your password is wrong, or that the mail server could not be contacted, or some stuff like that. You can then inject that into any advanced AI chatbot to ask for assistance.
Don't forget to set that option back to 0 when you're done.

This is not an issue with Chamilo though, so I'm moving this to discussions.

[tenchiro]

So I tried using email_tester.php to test what's happening with my email system in Chamilo as suggested.
I set [SMTP_Debug] to 1, I tried several settings as follows:

1. "localhost"/port: 25
2. "mail" /port : 465
3. "sendmail" / port : 465
4. "smtp" / port : 465 --> this cause my chamilo server to 'hang', so no go.

For 1), 2), and 3) the following was received from email_tester.php:

"E-mail sent. This procedure works in all aspects similarly to the normal e-mail sending of Chamilo, but allows for more flexibility in terms of destination e-mail and message body."

Unfortunately, I received no email. Based on Bluehost's configuration, mail/465 would be the correct setting. For mydomain.com, Bluehost's setting would be mail.mydomain.com at port 465 for outgoing mail.

If my memory served, in the past I don't ever have to change anything, so the default values of localhost:25 should have worked. (alas, this is no longer the case.)