Php – Redirect all email sent via PHP’s mail() function to single external address

Can you install the mailx package and see if you get the same delay when using the mail command?

echo foo | mail you@you.com

If that is the case then you know it is a sendmail issue, which is often because you need to set up the host + domain name on the machine.

Oh, I fixed the problem by following the information in this forum:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=666018

Basically, I looked in my /var/log/mail.log error file and found the error message "unable to look up public/pickup: no such file or directory".

I then issued the command

sudo mkfifo /var/spool/postfix/public/pickup

I made sure sendmail wasn't still running by doing a ps -aux and killing it

root@cpu:/var/log# ps aux | grep mail
root      2363  0.0  0.5   9228  1888 ?        Ss   Jan28   0:20 sendmail: MTA: accepting connections          
root     23914  0.0  0.2   3040   792 pts/0    S+   11:33   0:00 grep mail
root@cpu:/var/log# kill 2363

I restarted postfix

sudo /etc/init.d/postfix restart

And now the PHP mail function works.