12 March 2025, 14:51

Hi all,

I installed 5 years ago Mahara, version 19.10.1 (2019093009), in a Linux server hosted by ARUBA. It worked well until few months ago, when suddenly users no longer received the registration email. I tried changing the platform settings and also changing the config.php file, but the only result I got was to receive about 250 messages with: "Sender not allowed ( mail from ) SMTP code: 550 Additional SMTP info: 5.1.0SMTP server error: MAIL FROM command failed Detail: <[email protected]> dc0ut8e9SfFewdc0utbBrW - Sender not allowed ( mail from ) SMTP code: 550 Additional SMTP info: 5.1.0 in /web/htdocs/www.e-portfolio.it/home/UNITS/lib/user.php:891".

The email is registered on ARUBA and has always worked, I can't find any information about the log files, can anyone help me?

Thank you in advance.

14 March 2025, 8:50

Hi Luca,

Looking at the error message you received, it's SMTP 500 5.1.0. I found some explanation online, which hints at your server not being trusted to send reputable emails. Line 891 in /lib/user.php states:

 throw new EmailException("Couldn't send email to $usertoname with subject $subject. "
                        . "Error from phpmailer was: " . $mail->ErrorInfo );

So the problem is with PHPMailer, the library used to deal with email delivery. Mahara 19.10 is very old and PHPMailer would have received several updates since. Maybe your email delivery is blocked due to that. You could check if sending an email from your noreply address outside of Mahara results in the same error message and if you have your SPF and DKIM settings set up for your email domain.

Since this is an email error, you may wish to consult someone who is knowledgeable in setting up and maintaining a mail server.

Thank you

Kristina

26 March 2025, 8:40

Thank you Kristina, i changed the setting of the "noreply" email from the mail server and it started working again.

I know that the version of Mahara is old but the system has been in operation for 4 year and I don't know if updating it could raise some problem...

Thank you again!

27 March 2025, 21:24

Hi Luca,

Great that you could get the emails to work again. Working with an old, unsupported software version exposes you to security issues that have been fixed in later versions. Since problems are known, they would be more easily exploitable on your site. That's why we recommend to always stay up to date with maintenance versions.

Older versions of Mahara also don't work with PHP 8 and thus your risk is not just running an old version of Mahara but also running an old operating system that comes with its own security issues. If you stay up to date with maintenance versions and upgrade your server infrastructure, the amount of changes are more incremental rather than being big jumps. That usually also reduces the amount of effort that needs to be put into in the long run, also knowing that your student data is as secure as possible.

Cheers

Kristina