Hello,
I installed Dovecot from git 6b1bcf1bad1d78e, copied /usr/local/share/doc/dovecot/example/config to /usr/local/etc/dovecot and called dovecot -F . The system reported
doveconf: Fatal: Error in configuration file /usr/local/etc/dovecot/conf.d/auth-system.conf.ext line 11: passdb { } is missing section name
The problem remains, if I delete
dovecot-dict-auth.conf.ext dovecot-ldap.conf.ext dovecot-oauth2.conf.ext dovecot-sql.conf.ext conf.d/auth-deny.conf.ext conf.d/auth-ldap.conf.ext conf.d/auth-passwdfile.conf.ext conf.d/auth-static.conf.ext conf.d/auth-dict.conf.ext conf.d/auth-master.conf.ext conf.d/auth-sql.conf.ext
thus leaving passdb {} and userdb {} defined on a single place.
Indeed, auth-system.conf.ext contains the sections passdb and userdb without the optional name, as described at https://doc.dovecot.org/configuration_manual/config_file/#sections .
The problem report is that the example configuration does not contain for sections userdb and passdb a section name, and at the same time the as optional described section name is mandatory in Dovecot on these places.
Kind regards Dilyan