[Dovecot] problem with auth

I'm new to dovecot

(it's a cool piece of software!!!)

I'm using Debian woody

I'm trying to start the server but then there is this mail Do I have to set an environment variable or waht does this mean.

I'm trying to use a pgsql backend for authentification and I have compiled it from source

/usr/local/libexec/dovecot/dovecot-auth start dovecot-auth: Fatal: MECHANISMS environment is unset

Regards Ewald Geschwinde