[Dovecot] Can't disable chroot to 'empty' dir, but need to... how to do it?

[Tim Bessie]

Hello all...

I've installed dovecot on my ISP's shell server, and am using SSH tunnelling
so that I can retrieve my mbox-format mail from procmail-processed mailboxes
on that server (normally I just ssh there and read them locally with pine,
but now that I have a phone with an IMAP client, I wanted to be able to read
it more easily there).

The problem I'm having is, although it's working, whenever dovecot starts up,
or I try to log in, it attempts to chroot to /home/mydir/dovecot/var/run/dovecot/empty
(where /home/mydir/dovecot is the path to my dovecot installation).

I've turned off all chroot'ing in all the config files, but it still seems to
want to chroot to that one directory.  The message I see in the log is:

Mar 19 02:09:43 master: Info: Dovecot v2.0.11 starting up (core dumps disabled)
Mar 19 02:09:44 anvil: Fatal: chroot(/home/mydir/dovecot/var/run/dovecot/empty) failed: Operation not permitted
Mar 19 02:09:44 master: Error: service(anvil): command startup failed, throttling

This doesn't cause a problem accessing my mail, but it DOES seem to wait 60 seconds
between attempts at chroot'ing, so logins to the server take that long (until the
chroot fails).

Is there any way I can disable this?  Again, I've followed the instructions and
set 'chroot=' (empty) for all services, but that hasn't helped.

- Tim