Email piping works but resulting in bounced failure message to sender

[s_mack]

I'm trying to add a pipe-to-program filter for email in cPanel. It actually works perfectly, except that the sender gets a failure notice bounce. I've seen similar posts by people and it always seems to be relating to some PHP error, but in my case no such error is given... just a "report" of what happened. Any ideas on how I can prevent the bounce? Here's the complete bounced message (with identifying areas changed):

This message was created automatically by mail delivery software.

A message that you sent could not be delivered to one or more of its
recipients. This is a permanent error. The following address(es) failed:

pipe to |/usr/bin/php -q /home/critical/public_html/cgi-bin/pipetest.php
generated by recipient@replacedwithfakedomain.com

The following text was generated during the delivery attempt:

------ pipe to |/usr/bin/php -q /home/critical/public_html/cgi-bin/pipetest.php
generated by recipient@replacedwithfakedomain.com ------



------ This is a copy of the message, including all the headers. ------

Return-path: <sender@anotherfakedomain.com>
Received: from idcmail-mo1so.anotherfakedomain.com ([xx.xx.xx.xx])
by SouthBend-84.pgzn.com with esmtp (Exim 4.69)
(envelope-from <sender@anotherfakedomain.com>)
id 1Ph7Cy-0006kM-OB
for recipient@replacedwithfakedomain.com; Sun, 23 Jan 2011 16:10:50 -0500
Received: from pd2ml1so-ssvc.prod.anotherfakedomain.com ([xx.xx.xx.xx])
by pd2mo1so-svcs.prod.anotherfakedomain.com with ESMTP; 23 Jan 2011 14:04:51 -0700
X-Cloudmark-SP-Filtered: true
X-Cloudmark-SP-Result: v=1.1 cv=6EkEX6JM2LCztCEhkE317K9SpBSN4cB8nbuuHVfFIzI= c=1 sm=1
a=BLceEmwcHowA:10 a=8nJEP1OIZ-IA:10 a=a8Ng+qwsTi9bQXyB64v8wA==:17
a=nS36O97Bj3wUElCrIrAA:9 a=WSUfejPYnVaDIwHsvJh5HpFP3bwA:4 a=wPNLvfGTeEIA:10
a=HpAAvcLHHh0Zw7uRqdWCyQ==:117
Received: from unknown (HELO [192.168.144.100]) ([xx.xx.xx.xx])
by pd2ml1so-dmz.prod.anotherfakedomain.com with ESMTP; 23 Jan 2011 14:04:51 -0700
Message-ID: <4D3C97F3.3070907@anotherfakedomain.com>
Date: Sun, 23 Jan 2011 13:04:51 -0800
From: Fake person <sender@anotherfakedomain.com>
Reply-To: sender@anotherfakedomain.com
Organization: FakeOrg
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US; rv:1.9.2.13) Gecko/20101207 Thunderbird/3.1.7 ThunderBrowse/3.3.4
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: recipient@replacedwithfakedomain.com
Subject: test 2
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
X-Spam-Status: No, score=-0.2
X-Spam-Score: -1
X-Spam-Bar: /
X-Ham-Report: Spam detection software, running on the system "ThisIsMyHost.com", has
identified this incoming email as possible spam. The original message
has been attached to this so you can view it (if it isn't spam) or label
similar future email. If you have any questions, see
the administrator of that system for details.
Content preview: test [...]
Content analysis details: (-0.2 points, 5.0 required)
pts rule name description
---- ---------------------- --------------------------------------------------
-0.0 RCVD_IN_DNSWL_NONE RBL: Sender listed at dnswl.org - Protect against false positives, low
trust
[xx.xx.xx.xx listed in list.dnswl.org]
-0.0 T_RP_MATCHES_RCVD Envelope sender domain matches handover relay
domain
-0.0 SPF_PASS SPF: sender matches SPF record
-1.9 BAYES_00 BODY: Bayes spam probability is 0 to 1%
[score: 0.0000]
1.7 AWL AWL: From: address is in the auto white-list
X-Spam-Flag: NO

test

Thanks

-Steven

[jntcm]

A year late, but better late than never...

If you're getting an empty bounce back like this:

he following text was generated during the delivery attempt:

------ pipe to |/home/xxxxxx/public_html/tkt/pipe.php
generated by xxx@xxx.aq ------



------ This is a copy of the message, including all the headers. ------

You need to make sure that the first line of your script correctly tells where PHP is:

#!/usr/local/bin/php -q

Secondly, make sure your script is not outputting ANYTHING at all, anywhere, ever.

A common mistake is this:

#!/usr/local/bin/php -q

<?
//Php Code here...

See the blank line between the "#!" line and the "<?"... Yeah, that'll do it.

Happy coding!

[s_mack]

Lol... thanks. I don't even remember what I was trying to do at that time.

[webstro]

To follow up on this, I was having the same problem.

Difficult to debug because it seemed there was no real error.

Although I didn't have a space between the shebang and the <?php, I was still getting the error.

It turned out that there cannot be any blank lines, ANYWHERE, in the script.

I also removed any blank spaces at the end of lines, although I'm not sure that mattered. It works!

[webstro]

To clarify, my original pipe.php script:

#!/usr/local/bin/php -q
<?php

//do something
code;

// something else
code;

?>

FAILED.

The updated script:

#!/usr/local/bin/php -q
<?php
//do something
code;
// something else
code;
?>

WORKED.