Strange issues setting up SMTP - Moodle 3.9.2 BUILD: 20201016

Strange issues setting up SMTP - Moodle 3.9.2 BUILD: 20201016

by Stephen Jenkins -
Number of replies: 3

I have been able to set up and configure Moodle on a fresh installation of Ubuntu 20.04.

Moodle seems happy with everything I have installed, and the server passes all the self-checks with flying colors.

However, upon starting to do some tasks, like copying a course. I was getting this error screen:


It felt very, random - and I was confused, I do not believe had really altered anything (like a PHP.ini setting) that would cause an issue like this.

I then was able to pin point this error to tasks that triggered the outgoing mail function. I was able to confirm this by turning off notifications for a number of tasks that were triggering outgoing email, and subsequently, this error. Turning off those notifications allowed the tasks (like copying courses) to proceed without incident. (Actually they were running fine, but I was getting that error instead of being return to Admin Home - anyway, I digress...)

My questions are two-fold: Does anyone know what could be causing this? Does anyone know how to fix it?

/var/log/apache2/error.log shows me this error which occurs after each time I try to run the outgoing mail test tool:

[Sun Nov 29 07:44:35.930993 2020] [fcgid:warn] [pid 305511] mod_fcgid: process 376204 graceful kill fail, sending SIGKILL

Hopefully I have provided enough information to analyze my situation. I am happy to post any other config or log files as needed.

 Thank you in advance!

Stephen



Average of ratings: -
In reply to Stephen Jenkins

Re: Strange issues setting up SMTP - Moodle 3.9.2 BUILD: 20201016

by Visvanath Ratnaweera -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Translators
It the cause of the error is what it says, outgoing e-mail returning errors, it could only mean the outgoing mail configuration is wrong. See https://docs.moodle.org/39/en/Installing_Moodle#Settings_within_Moodle. See also https://docs.moodle.org/39/en/Messaging_settings.
In reply to Visvanath Ratnaweera

Re: Strange issues setting up SMTP - Moodle 3.9.2 BUILD: 20201016

by Stephen Jenkins -
Yes, but I am using very standard Gmail settings. And, shouldn't the error be displayed by Moodle, instead of Apache?
In reply to Stephen Jenkins

Re: Strange issues setting up SMTP - Moodle 3.9.2 BUILD: 20201016

by Visvanath Ratnaweera -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Translators
So things like forum posts, password resets are delivered properly by e-mail?