Password recovery: "Error while sending mail..."

Hi guys.

I’m trying to log in to an installation of revo that I haven’t logged into for a while.

The saved pass credentials in my browser for the installation doesn’t match the installation credentials.
So, I click on the "Forgot your Login?" Link, and provide my email address.
I’m certain that the email address that I give is correct for this installation.

The error message I then get is "Error while sending mail to [address]".

This is frustrating, because I don’t know the nature of the error.
Is the provided email address incorrect?
Did revo attempt to send the email before encountering a php error?

I’m looking through the forums now to find out how to get use phpmyadmin or something to change the password.

But I’m wondering - should more detail be provided from error messages from that process?
It would be helpful.

I’ve got the same issue as OP. Also, I’m certain that my username and password are correct but after pressing login I just end up to an empty page.

Im using Xampp v.1.7.3 running on Vista Enterprise 32bit and Modx Revolution v.2.0.6-pl2. My browser is FF3.6.

Hi guys. I’m still having this problem.

Once again, my password held by my browser isn’t accepted by my modx install.
Again, I’m getting the completely useless message "error while mail..."

This time I looked at the email held for the user in the modx database. The email that I’m using in the ’forgot password’ dialogue is correct.

Would the developers consider employing a more useful error message?

If you get the mail error message, the most likely thing is that there is no working mail() system -- not much MODx can do about that except tell you that it failed to send the mail.

Look here (third from the bottom) to see how to log in if you don’t have the right credentials: http://www.bobsguides.com/modx-newbie-faq.html

If you get a blank screen, however, that’s a different problem, often due to running short of memory during the install. There are some other possibilities here: http://www.bobsguides.com/modx-installation-faq.html

Quote from: BobRay at Jan 25, 2011, 04:05 AM

If you get the mail error message, the most likely thing is that there is no working mail() system -- not much MODx can do about that except tell you that it failed to send the mail.

The server certainly has the mail() function available.
I have other sites set up on the same server. These other sites have scripts that use the mail() function. I have tested this.

Just to be sure, try installing the QuickEmail package. It’s good for diagnosing email issues.

If you can’t log in, see the note near the end here: http://bobsguides.com/modx-newbie-faq.html

You can also check the error file on the filesystem to see if anything is going wrong: core/cache/logs/error.log

I'm suddenly experiencing this issue as well. I've got three MODX installs on the same server. Two of them throw this error.


The two sites that don't work are running 2.3.3. The one that still works is running 2.2.13 (with the security patch).

I just realized for these sites we are using the smtp settings to use gmail to send the emails, and I think the client probably changed the password for the email address it was being routed through. Probably a false alarm.

On 2.3 sites I had to change the smtp port from 465 to 587. [ed. note: dinocorn last edited this post 8 years, 9 months ago.]