Email Confirmations failing to be sent

[D Mc]

Good afternoon, 

I'm hoping that someone might be able to point me in the right direction as to where I am making an error. I am in the process of building a small static website for my partner, and as a part of it I wanted to install Easy!Appointments for her. I have installed and gone through the initial process, but when I attempt to make a booking as a test I don't get the confirmation of booking email. I'm hoping someone might be able to point me in the rght direction?

• When I run cat log-2025-12-23.php | grep ERROR I get the following output:

ERROR - 2025-12-23 11:11:42 --> Notifications - Could not email appointment-saved to customer (6) : Could not instantiate mail function. Trace: array (
ERROR - 2025-12-23 11:11:42 --> #0 /var/www/wanderpups/easyappointments/vendor/phpmailer/phpmailer/src/PHPMailer.php(1749): PHPMailer\PHPMailer\PHPMailer->mailSend()
ERROR - 2025-12-23 11:11:42 --> Notifications - Could not email appointment-saved to provider (6) : Could not instantiate mail function. Trace: array (
ERROR - 2025-12-23 11:11:42 --> #0 /var/www/wanderpups/easyappointments/vendor/phpmailer/phpmailer/src/PHPMailer.php(1749): PHPMailer\PHPMailer\PHPMailer->mailSend()
ERROR - 2025-12-23 11:11:42 --> Notifications - Could not email appointment-saved to admin (6) : Could not instantiate mail function. Trace: array (
ERROR - 2025-12-23 11:11:42 --> #0 /var/www/wanderpups/easyappointments/vendor/phpmailer/phpmailer/src/PHPMailer.php(1749): PHPMailer\PHPMailer\PHPMailer->mailSend()

• When I run Netcat, I get the following:

nc -vz REDACTED.netcetera.co.uk 465
Connection to REDACTED.netcetera.co.uk (REDACTED) 465 port [tcp/urd] succeeded!

nc -vz REDACTED.netcetera.co.uk 465
Connection to REDACTED.netcetera.co.uk (REDACTED) 465 port [tcp/urd] succeeded!
[dog-walkers@dog-walkers logs]$ openssl s_client -connect REDACTED.netcetera.co.uk:465 -brief
Connecting to REDACTED
CONNECTION ESTABLISHED
Protocol version: TLSv1.3
Ciphersuite: TLS_AES_256_GCM_SHA384
Peer certificate: CN=*.netcetera.co.uk
Hash used: SHA256
Signature type: rsa_pss_rsae_sha256
Verification: OK
Peer Temp Key: X25519, 253 bits
220 REDACTED.netcetera.co.uk ESMTP Postfix

and nftables OUTPUT policy is accept, no blocking rules.

• easyappointments/application/config/email.php:

<?php defined('BASEPATH') or exit('No direct script access allowed');

// Add custom values by settings them to the $config array.
// Example: $config['smtp_host'] = 'smtp.gmail.com';
// @link https://codeigniter.com/user_guide/libraries/email.html

$config['useragent'] = 'Easy!Appointments';
$config['protocol'] = 'mail'; // or 'smtp'
$config['mailtype'] = 'html'; // or 'text'
// $config['smtp_debug'] = '1'; // or '1'
// $config['smtp_auth'] = TRUE; //or FALSE for anonymous relay.
// $config['smtp_host'] = 'REDACTED.netcetera.co.uk';
// $config['smtp_user'] = 'REDA...@wanderpups.co.uk';
// $config['smtp_pass'] = 'REDACTED';
// $config['smtp_crypto'] = 'ssl'; // or 'tls'
// $config['smtp_port'] = 465;
// $config['from_name'] = 'REDACTED';
// $config['from_address'] = 'REDA...@wanderpups.co.uk';
// $config['reply_to'] = '';
$config['crlf'] = "\r\n";
$config['newline'] = "\r\n";

[Phil Bass]

I see you have 10 lines of your config/email.php file commented out. I'm no expert, but I think you will need to uncomment the lines from smtp_auth through to from_address. Something like this:

// $config['smtp_debug'] = '1'; // or '1'

$config['smtp_auth'] = TRUE; //or FALSE for anonymous relay.

$config['smtp_host'] = 'REDACTED.netcetera.co.uk';
$config['smtp_user'] = 'REDA...@wanderpups.co.uk';
$config['smtp_pass'] = 'REDACTED';

$config['smtp_crypto'] = 'ssl'; // or 'tls'

$config['smtp_port'] = 465;
$config['from_name'] = 'REDACTED';

$config['from_address'] = 'REDA...@wanderpups.co.uk';
// $config['reply_to'] = '';

Does this help?

[D Mc]

Thank you for pointing out my error on leaving the commented lines, I have been trying to debug it all day and didn't realise I had left them in when I posted.

I've removed them, and done a little more tweaking...discovered that the Arch OS on the VPS doesn't come installed with Sendmail, and seems to be working now.

I've noticed that the emails are landing in Junk Mail, does anyone have any advice on stopping that?