I am having a problem with the average server load on my godaddy VDS getting as high as 50. The culprit is all the smtpd processes. If I kill postfix the server load will drop down to about 0.7.
This server is not an open relay. I added the following to main.cf to prevent that.
smtpd_helo_required = yes
smtpd_delay_reject = no
disable_vrfy_command = yes
My theory is that even though the server is rejecting relaying it is still being bogged down due to the enormous amount of relay attempts. I just started the mail logging under an hour ago and the file size has went from zero to 8.0M in that time because of all the relay attempts. Would these attempts even though rejected be able to considerably add to the server load? If so how can I remedy this?
Here is a typical rejection in the log.
Jul 30 17:01:43 ip-xxx postfix/smtpd[7555]: NOQUEUE: reject: RCPT from tdev193-211.codetel.net.do[200.88.193.211]: 554 5.7.1 : Relay access denied; from= to= proto=ESMTP helo=
I am by no means adapt at mail server configuration. I will be happy to provide any further informtation needed to zero in on this problem.