PHPBB 3.x + PostFix + Virtualmin + Mass Email = FAIL

I have been using CentOS and Virtualmin for a number of years and recently I a requirement for a forum based system. I used PHPBB a number of years and so this was my first choice.

WHAT A PAIN!

PHPBB installed correctly and i had the site up and running in no time, then one of the users complained they had requested a password reset, but never received one?

The core system was CentOS with the ‘full’ install of Virtualmin, before I have only used the webmin module for Virtualmin, so i started to debug the log files.

I tried sending an email in PHPBB using the ‘mass email’ function but the error was:

E-mail error
» EMAIL/PHP/mail()
/adm/index.php

There was no real obvious signs in the logs apart from:

postfix/sendmail[19438]: fatal: chdir /var/spool/postfix: Permission denied

In the ‘maillog’ log file.

I checked the PHP.INI config file and it was correct, for using Postfix

sendmail_path = /usr/sbin/sendmail -t –i

So it was head scratching time! I then remembered that in the past I have always had issues with SELinux and generally with internal servers i disable it. So i checked the settings and it was enabled, so i disabled it and rebooted.

/etc/selinux/config

Change SELINUX=enabled to SELINUX=disabled

Gave it a test by sending a test ‘mass email’ to a user and it worked, I then got the user to request a new password and that also worked!