[BlueOnyx:01429] Re: 'On behalf of' in the address from Sendmail

[Michael Stauber]

Hi Tony,


> I am trying RMail to send email by PHP and I get;
>
> 	Apache [apache at domain] on behalf of Sender [sender at domain]
>
> I have created the user but I still cannot figure out how to stop the 'on
> behalf of' being added by Sendmail.

There are like a dozen ways how a PHP script can send emails. Among them it 
can use the PHP mail() function, it can use one of the various PEAR modules, 
can create a socket with Sendmail or use the SMTP protocol to establish 
communication with a smail server or it can launch a system call to fire up 
the sendmail binary.

Your script is doing something rather unsophisticated. It's using the mail() 
function and sends an email, *claiming* to be sender at domain. 

For security reasons Sendmail then adds a warning, telling that Apache tried 
to fake the sender address of the email.

The "easy" and unsecure way around that is to add "apache" to 
/etc/mail/trusted-users, so that Sendmail *trusts* Apache and allows it to 
fake the senders of email at hearts content.

The proper way however would be to use a more sophisticated email procedure in 
your script. 

For example you could use SMTP-Auth:

http://email.about.com/od/emailprogrammingtips/qt/et073006.htm

http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/howto-php-send-email-via-smtp-
authentication.html

That way the script authenticates against Sendmail with a valid username and 
password and uses SMTP to transmit the message.

-- 
With best regards

Michael Stauber