LMTP "Relative home directory paths not supported"

[Jeff Kletsky]

I'm in the process of moving from LDA to LMTP (Postfix upstream) prior 
to a transition off `nix accounts to virtual accounts and am stumped by 
LMTP reporting

     dovecot: lmtp(10019, jeff at example.com): Error: Relative home 
directory paths not supported: 0

LDA does /not /have any problems with PAM or passwd-file passdb/userdb 
and the ubiquitous definition of

     mail_location = maildir:~/Maildir:LAYOUT=fs

I have yet to be able to get LMTP to deliver mail, nor have I found 
anything on the Dovecot wiki to describe how to represent that the 
mail_location is <whatever/userdb/returned/for/home>/Maildir

I'd prefer to localize the user-to-file-space mapping localized to 
Dovecot (rather than split within Postfix and Dovecot)

I'd definitely appreciate any pointers to web pages or specific 
suggestions as to how to resolve this.

Excerpts of Dovecot local.conf follow, full doveconf -n output on 
request. The/users /file is in the same format as FreeBSD 
/etc/master.passwd with name, password, UID, gid, home_dir, and shell 
meaningfully populated. The configuration below works with LDA 
(end-to-end). With LMTP, it identifies <jeff at example.com> as a valid 
destination, but fails on delivery with the "relative home directory 
paths" error message.

passdb {
   driver = passwd-file
   args = /path/to/users
}
userdb {
   driver = passwd-file
   args = username_format=%n /path/to/users
}

# See http://wiki2.dovecot.org/MailLocation/Maildir
# https://wiki.dovecot.org/VirtualUsers/Home

mail_location = maildir:~/Maildir:LAYOUT=fs
# mail_location = maildir:%h/Maildir:LAYOUT=fs



Thanks!

Jeff