php.ini send email on Linux

If you just want to send email (not receiving email) from your PHP server, and you have a SMTP Email server, here is how you do it:

(First, you don't need to edit your php.ini file SMTP settings, because on Linux those are not used by PHP)

1. Install SSMTP on your system (Debian/Ubuntu via apt-get, RHEL/CentOS using the Fedora EPEL Package search to find the package.
2. Use "ssmtp" to replace "sendmail" on your system. ssmtp use the same command argument as sendmail.
3. configure your /etc/ssmtp/ssmtp.conf file:


root=postmaster
mailhub=SMTP SERVER IP ADDRESS
RewriteDomain=your_from_domain.com
#this allows you to specify your from address
FromLineOverride=YES

4.  Now send an email. Type

ssmtp recipient_email@example.com
sSMTP will then wait for you to type your message, which needs to be formatted like this:
To: recipient_email@example.com
From: myemailaddress@gmail.com
Subject: test email

hello world!
Note the blank like after the subject, everything after this line is the body of the email. When you’re finished, press Ctrl-D.

You can also use script. Create a file msg.txt, then send it:
ssmtp myemailaddress@gmail.com < msg.txt


msg.txt is a simple text using the proper formatting for sSMTP:
To: myemailaddress@gmail.com
From: myemailaddress@gmail.com
Subject: alert

The server is down!


Credit: http://tombuntu.com/index.php/2008/10/21/sending-email-from-your-system-with-ssmtp/