Sendmail gives Return Code 8 - Can't Get Past It - Ideas?

Question

I used 'sendmail' function. It worked fine in 3 of my test environments but not a 4th. Environmental engineers have looked at SMTP setup & other configurations & recycled the trouble region to no help. If you have seen before or can suggest help, thanks!
I get return code 8 from the sendmail, which I find means some kind of 'platform dependent' error. Bear in mind that our test environments are all pretty much identical & this error only occurs in 1 out of 4.
I note in documentation for 'Pbooks 8.9' the following warning with the 'sendmail' function, which leads me to conclude Oracle recommends NOT to use sendmail:
"The flags parameter of this function and its return codes are platform dependent: the SMTP mail API ignores any additional flags. For this reason, SendMail should be used only in customizations that run on a known platform, if it is used at all. The preferred, platform-independent method for sending email from PeopleCode is to define an email routing as part of a business event, then trigger the business event using the TriggerBusinessEvent function."
Here is my sendmail code, embedded to a record SEd event(some parts of code not printed to save space):
Local SQL &EmailBodySQL;
Local string &EMMsgText;
Local number &msg_nbr;
Local number &email_return;
Local string &Email_From, &Email_Sep, &Reply_To, &EMSender;
&EmailBodySQL = GetSQL(SQL.KP_PC_EMAILBODY_SEL);
If Not &EmailBodySQL.Fetch(&EMMsgText, &msg_nbr) Then
MessageBox(0, "", 20100, 8, "No Message for Message Set 20100, number : :1", &msg_nbr);
&email_return = 99;
Else
%This.EmSubject = &EMMsgText | &projBU | " " | &projID;
&Email_From = %EmailAddress;
&Reply_To = %EmailAddress;
&EMSender = "";
&Email_Sep = ";";
&email_return = SendMail(0, &team_members, "", "", %This.EmSubject, &em_text_body, "", "", &Email_From, &Email_Sep, &Reply_To, &EMSender);
End-If;
&EmailBodySQL.Close();
Return &email_return;
&email_return = &KP_PC_Email.pcattach_email_send(&team_members, &email_body, &projBU, &projID);
If &email_return = 0 Then
MessageBox(0, "", 20100, 12, "Email sent for business unit :1 , project ID :2", &projBU, &projID);
Else
MessageBox(0, "", 20100, 11, "Email failed. Return status from sendmail = :1 ", &email_return);
End-If;
Edited by: 1001697 on Apr 22, 2013 1:52 PM
Edited by: 1001697 on Apr 22, 2013 1:53 PM

Answer 1

Try enabling logging by setting SMTP Trace parameter to 1 to get more info on the cause.
PeopleBooks > PeopleTools 8.52: System and Server Administration > Setting Application Server Domain Parameters
SMTPTrace
Enter 1 to enable the tracing of email details to the log file. Enter 0 to disable SMTP tracing.
LogFence should be set to 5.
The system writes the log information to SMTP<DDMM>.log in %PS_SERVDIR%/LOGS, by default, or the custom value set for Log Directory. For example:
PS_CFG_HOME\APPSERV\domain\LOGS\SMTP6_27.log