[Dovecot] Can't read dovecot.conf

[E P]

Hello all,

I'm attempting to run dovecot on an HP-UX 11.11 system ... the built
went fine, and I've got the program installed.  I copied
dovecot-example.conf to dovecot.conf and made a few changes to it, then
went to sbin and ran the dovecot binary to see what would happen.  What
happened was this:

colin:/usr/local/dovecot/sbin# ./dovecot 
Error: Error in configuration file /usr/local/dovecot/etc/dovecot.conf
line 1: Unknown setting: _cert_file

... which is odd; line 1 of dovecot.conf was actually this:

## Dovecot configuration file

... and the first line that wasn't commented out was this:

protocols = imaps

So just for fun I changed the first non-commented line to this:

protocols=imaps

... and then ran the dovecot binary again.  This time the error was
subtly different:

colin:/usr/local/dovecot/sbin# ./dovecot 
Error: Error in configuration file /usr/local/dovecot/etc/dovecot.conf
line 1: Unknown setting: ert_file

... "aha" says I, "it's having some issue with comments."  So I took out
every line in dovecot.conf that wasn't a comment, leaving me with just
23 lines:

protocols=imaps
listen=<IP address>
ssl_cert_file=/opt/openssl/certs/imapd.pem
ssl_key_file=/opt/openssl/certs/imapd.pem
disable_plaintext_auth=yes
protocol imap {
    login_executable=/usr/local/dovecot/libexec/dovecot/imap-login
    mail_executable=/usr/local/dovecot/libexec/dovecot/imap
    mail_plugin_dir=/usr/local/dovecot/lib/dovecot
}
protocol pop3 {
}
auth_executable=/usr/local/dovecot/libexec/dovecot/dovecot-auth
auth default {
   mechanisms=plain
   passdb pam {
   }
   userdb passwd {
   }
   user=root
}
plugin {
}


This time, when I ran the binary, I got a new error:

colin:/usr/local/dovecot/sbin# ./dovecot 
Error: Can't use SSL certificate /opt/openssl/certs/dovecot.pem: No such
file or directory

... this is odd, because the config file clearly states that it should
look for the certificate elsewhere.  But just for fun, I made
dovecot.pem symlinks in /opt/openssl/certs and /opt/openssl/private.
Then I try running again:

colin:/usr/local/dovecot/sbin# ./dovecot 
Error: Missing auth section for server default

At this point, it's becoming clear to me that my current tactic isn't
doing much, so I read some READMEs, checked the wiki, googled around a
bit, and now I'm here.

Anyone have hints on this?

Thanks
--
Elliott