How to Find Out What Program is Sending Emails in Linux

configurationdebianemaillinux

I have linux (debian) box which is running fine.
However I have problem I need to find out what program is sending emails when i use "mail" command. Or for that matter when a PHP script is sending emails with mail() function I need to know what program is sending those emails.

How can I find out?

Ps: To clear, I'd like to know what program is invoked when I (or a program) use the "mail" command.

There are 2-3 MTA's installed on my server but I can't find out which one is responsible for sending mail.

Best Answer

What you're asking how to do:
dpkg -S /path/to/mail

/path/to/mail/ can be found using which mail, provided that mail is in your path.

Minor Note:
Mail also be sent out using sendmail instead of mail.

What you should do:
Look at your maillog, likely /var/log/maillog or /var/log/mail.log the daemon name should be there.

Related Solutions

PHP – Find the PHP Script That’s Sending Mails

php 5.3 was slotted to get better mail tracing, but I'm not sure if that happened. (edit: yes php 5.3 has logging built in now - php.ini has the config variable mail.log which will log use of mail from php code.)

We solved the problem by making sendmail a wrapper shell script.

In php.ini set a new mailer. E.g.:

sendmail_path = /usr/local/bin/sendmail-php -t -i

The sendmail-php script simply uses logger to get info, and then calls the system's sendmail:

#!/bin/bash

logger -p mail.info -t sendmail-php "site=${HTTP_HOST}, client=${REMOTE_ADDR}, script=${SCRIPT_NAME}, filename=${SCRIPT_FILENAME}, docroot=${DOCUMENT_ROOT}, pwd=${PWD}, uid=${UID}, user=$(whoami)"

/usr/sbin/sendmail -t -i $*

This will log to whatever your mail.info is set to in the syslog.conf file.

Another suggestion is to install suhosin php extension to tighten up loopholes in PHP, unless you are running Debian or Ubuntu where this is already the default.

How to make Amazon SES the default method of sending mail from the server

Amazon just released SMTP access to SES. I whipped up a quick howto for it this morning: http://www.millcreeksys.com/2011/12/14/how-to-configure-your-postfix-server-to-relay-email-through-amazon-simple-email-service-ses/

Best Answer

Related Solutions

PHP – Find the PHP Script That’s Sending Mails

How to make Amazon SES the default method of sending mail from the server

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