Started receiving "Could not instantiate mail function" ...

[lat9]

... on a Zen Cart 1.5.1 site that I've done some programming for. They're hosted on bluehost (are they really "compatible" hosts?) and over the past couple of days, the office staff noticed that they're not receiving order-confirmation emails (although the orders are recorded in the database).

I added a bit of debug code and found that the subject message (Could not instantiate mail function) is being returned by the phpMailer->Send function (the site's using the PHP email method with all default settings).

The sweet-young-thing that I spoke to on the phone ran a "test" using the PHP built-in mail function (which did sent that email) and then said that (essentially) BlueHost isn't in the business of debugging custom programming when I pointed out that its the phpMailer processing (which worked on Tuesday) that's failing.

Other than changing the mail-transport method to SMTP, anybody got any clues as to what bluehost has changed to cause these (silent) email failures?

[DrByte]

I've observed that bluehost is definitely less compliant with usual standards than they were in the past.

anybody got any clues as to what bluehost has changed to cause these (silent) email failures?

The list of possibilities is long.

I suspect they've changed the PHP version and the php.ini defaults (for email/smtp) are different than what they were before.

I'd start with this, to do more regular logging of failures: https://github.com/zencart/zencart/pull/801/files
(but that might have other dependencies from newer ZC versions, particularly the enable_error_logging.php file updates, with which lat9 I know you're already familiar)

If you can consistently trigger the problem, then turn on the email debugging, using the constant at the top of functions_email.php. Setting it to something higher than 0 will cause detailed output (TO THE SCREEN!) which you can use to understand the specifics better. But, make sure it's only temporary due to the info that'll be shown to whoever's triggering emails to be sent.

But, as you suggested, switching to SMTP (actually SMTPAUTH is even better IMO) can probably bypass the issue.



AND an update to the latest ZC version will help since it also includes a more modern version of PHPMailer, which is more compatible with modern server configurations than when v151 was released several years ago.

[lat9]

Thanks (as always), DrByte. It was, essentially, that change that you posted that led me to the (otherwise silently-failing) email issue!

I'll play with the email-debug levels, too, to try to get a handle on the error -- but this is one of those issues where I'll be happy to simply find a work-around (like just changing to SMTPAUTH).

To your final comment, you're preaching to the choir (but it's the shop's busy season) and we're already considering that upgrade sometime in the fall.