My dev environment is Win XP SP2 / Apache 2.something PHP 5.something_or_other

My prod env is Linux Ubuntu / Apache 2.something_else PHP 5.something_or_other_else

The code is all Zend Framework Version: 1.11.1

I can telnet to: smtp.gmail.com 465 from the PC.

I have Mercury configured on my PC to use gmail as it's smtp host and it works just fine. (MercuryC SMTP Client). Mercury is set to use port 465 and SSL on smtp.gmail.com -- No problem.

Zend mail works just fine on my production environment using the production mail server to send out mail. It's the same basic application.ini but with different values in the mail variables.

On my local PC dev setup, my application.ini contains: (same values as I use in Mercury)

mail.templatePath = APPLICATION_PATH "/emails"
mail.sender.name = "myAccount"
mail.sender.email = "[email protected]"
mail.host = smtp.gmail.com
mail.smtp.auth = "login"
mail.smtp.username = "[email protected]"
mail.smtp.password = "myPassWord"
mail.smtp.ssl = "ssl"
mail.smtp.port = 465

I have been doing trial and error for hours trying to get a single email out with no success. In every case, regardless of server or port settings it throws an error and reports:

Could not open socket.

Both Apache and Mercury Core are exceptions in my Windows Firewall config. Mercury seems to be having no problem.

I have searched stackoverflow before posting this and have been googling for hours -- with no success.

I am slowly losing my mind

I would be very much obliged for any tip as to what might be wrong.

Thanks for reading.

===================

BTW

When I use the SAME application.ini values on my local PC as on the production host, I get the same "Could not open socket" error.

Those values are:

mail.templatePath = APPLICATION_PATH "/emails"
mail.sender.name = "otherUser"
mail.sender.email = "[email protected]"
mail.host = smtp.otherServer.com
mail.smtp.auth = "login"
mail.smtp.username = "[email protected]"
mail.smtp.password = "otherPAssWord"
mail.smtp.ssl = "ssl"
mail.smtp.port = 465

I know these work in the production (Ubuntu) environment.

I'm utterly baffled.