[Dovecot] Dovecot lda woes

Having some painful problems with the dovecot lda and getting it to (a). Just work (b). Work with sendmail

This is how I have dovecot setup (appropriate dovecot.conf snippets included)

protocol lda {

module_dir = /usr/local/lib/dovecot/lda
postmaster_address = postmaster@bradphinney.com
auth_socket_path = /var/run/dovecot-auth-master

}

auth default {

.... # passwd-like file with specified location passdb passwd-file { # Path for passwd-file args = /etc/dovecot-passdb }

userdb static {
	args = uid=500 gid=500 home=/var/mail/%u

mail=mbox:/export/dovecot/%d/%u/ nice=10 } ... }

Here is what deliver is set up as

-rwsr-sr-x 1 dovecot dovecot 2070623 Feb 19 18:22 deliver*

I drop sendmail into debugging mode so I can at least see if it is resolving the address correctly. Here is my mailertable entries :

testdomain1.com dovecot:dovecot

I fire up sendmail. telnet to port 25 and see if I cant get some mail delivered.

Here is what sendmail spits out

Feb 20 18:54:18 titan sendmail[6475]: k1KNqWti006459: to=echo@testdomain1.com, delay=00:01:16, xdelay=00:00:00, mailer=dovecot, pri=120016, relay=dovecot, dsn=5.3.0, stat=unknown mailer error 89

Not good. On a hunch .. I change the permissions on the dovecot log to be 777. Now .. I get a different error ..

Feb 20 18:12:14 titan sendmail[6014]: k1KNBQ1e006006: to=echo@testdomain1.com, delay=00:00:03, xdelay=00:00:00, mailer=dovecot, pri=120012, relay=dovecot, dsn=4.0.0, stat=Deferred: dovecot mailer (/usr/local/libexec/dovecot/deliver) exited with EX_TEMPFAIL

Any ideas ?