Turns out, you were right, Ted. It is a DNS failure. Here is the relevant part of ktrace of the smtpd:
# kdump | tail -40 31531 smtpd RET clock_gettime 0 31531 smtpd CALL poll(0x7f7ffffd75d0,1,20000) 31531 smtpd STRU struct pollfd { fd=3, events=0x1<POLLIN>, revents=0<> } 31531 smtpd RET poll 0 31531 smtpd CALL recvfrom(3,0x1dc776e6f000,0x1000,0,0,0) 31531 smtpd RET recvfrom -1 errno 35 Resource temporarily unavailable 31531 smtpd CALL close(3) 31531 smtpd RET close 0 31531 smtpd CALL socket(AF_INET,0x5002<SOCK_DGRAM|SOCK_NONBLOCK|SOCK_DNS>,0 ) 31531 smtpd RET socket 3 31531 smtpd CALL connect(3,0x1dc7d136ecb0,16) 31531 smtpd STRU struct sockaddr { AF_INET, 192.168.1.1:53 } 31531 smtpd RET connect 0 31531 smtpd CALL sendto(3,0x1dc781f2a200,0x18,0,0,0) 31531 smtpd GIO fd 3 wrote 24 bytes "\r\M-T\^A\0\0\^A\0\0\0\0\0\0\^Fmypcname\0\0\^\\0\^A" 31531 smtpd RET sendto 24/0x18 31531 smtpd CALL clock_gettime(CLOCK_MONOTONIC,0x7f7ffffd75c0) 31531 smtpd STRU struct timespec { 35917.002552533 } 31531 smtpd RET clock_gettime 0 31531 smtpd CALL poll(0x7f7ffffd75d0,1,20000) 31531 smtpd STRU struct pollfd { fd=3, events=0x1<POLLIN>, revents=0<> } 31531 smtpd RET poll 0 31531 smtpd CALL recvfrom(3,0x1dc776e6f000,0x1000,0,0,0) 31531 smtpd RET recvfrom -1 errno 35 Resource temporarily unavailable 31531 smtpd CALL close(3) 31531 smtpd RET close 0 31531 smtpd CALL socket(AF_INET,0x5002<SOCK_DGRAM|SOCK_NONBLOCK|SOCK_DNS>,0 ) 31531 smtpd RET socket 3 31531 smtpd CALL connect(3,0x1dc7d136ecb0,16) 31531 smtpd STRU struct sockaddr { AF_INET, 192.168.1.1:53 } 31531 smtpd RET connect 0 31531 smtpd CALL sendto(3,0x1dc781f2a200,0x18,0,0,0) 31531 smtpd GIO fd 3 wrote 24 bytes "\r\M-T\^A\0\0\^A\0\0\0\0\0\0\^Fmypcname\0\0\^\\0\^A" 31531 smtpd RET sendto 24/0x18 31531 smtpd CALL clock_gettime(CLOCK_MONOTONIC,0x7f7ffffd75c0) 31531 smtpd STRU struct timespec { 35937.012972572 } 31531 smtpd RET clock_gettime 0 31531 smtpd CALL poll(0x7f7ffffd75d0,1,40000) And so on. If I understand correct, the problem is that my DNS server on 192.168.1.1 can't lookup an IP address for "mypcname", which is not a registered domain name, just cooked-up hostname of the machine running smtpd. Honestly, I don't know how it could be fixed. Could anybody help me?