Apparent "Bug/fault" with OpenCart's Checkout Process - Fix and Diagnosis.

here is a fix provided for me by victorj

Situation
I completed a fresh plain vanilla install of OC and the checkout bit of OC wouldn't work, even when using a simple "bank transfer" payment method the checkout cart would hang. This was installed on a shared hosting environment which I knew to be good. OC did not advise of any issues prior to installation and the install ran through smoothly.

Fault
It turns out that if OC is unable to send an email during order processing it will cause the cart to hang, but you'll never see that provided as a formal error.

Fix
I eventually accessed an error message talking about illegal characters etc. Buried in this was the following mail(/var/log/phpmail.log): failed to open stream: Permission denied.

Currently OC does not check for read/write permission in the hosting company's system for email. I requested that my hosting Co. adjust these and OC started working as expected.
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Note to OC development team: It would be worthwhile checking this directories permissions status during install and flagging up as an advisory advising that it needs to be fixed or SMTP has to be used. Had it been my first attempt to use OC, I'd have scrubbed it and moved on. It would be worth creating an error box for this fault as its fatal to order processing and could occur after a system was commissioned if the mailing service failed.

Note to OC development team: It would be worthwhile checking this directories permissions status during install and flagging up as an advisory advising that it needs to be fixed or SMTP has to be used. Had it been my first attempt to use OC, I'd have scrubbed it and moved on. It would be worth creating an error box for this fault as its fatal to order processing and could occur after a system was commissioned if the mailing service failed.

That would be undistinguishable since there are forum users who are reporting issues with their emails even though it may send from specific locations but not from others while those options from the OC admin are already selected while other forum users are still able to send those emails normally. With those reports being sent, these events do not originate from OC itself but simply rather due to a different email header requirements that needs to be created between servers. Email servers have no standard form-heading structure when sending those emails from the web with Mail protocol. As for SMTP, the protocol has been developed with a more solid concept. Although, it may also be harden to configure, again, between servers.