Symptoms
Unable to connect to SMTP server using PHP and OpenSSL. The following related error messages may appear as part of troubleshooting output:
PHP Warning: fsockopen(): SSL operation failed with code 1. OpenSSL Error messages: error:14090086:SSL
routines:SSL3_GET_SERVER_CERTIFICATE:certificate verify failed
PHP Warning: fsockopen(): Failed to enable crypto
PHP Warning: fsockopen(): unable to connect to ssl
PHP User Warning: Unable to connect to SMTP server
Solution
You are missing Certification Authority (CA) files on your system or you have provided an incorrect path to Certification Authority (CA) files. If you did not provide a custom path to CA files within php.ini file PHP looks for a default system CA root certificate bundle. If CA root certificate bundle is missing you get the above error message. The solution is to install Certification Authority (CA) bundle:
DEBIAN/UBUNTU:
apt-get install ca-certificates
CENTOS/REDHAT
yum install ca-certificates.noarch