auth-worker unknown user

[Laura Smith]

‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
On Thursday, April 11, 2019 3:07 PM, Aki Tuomi <aki.tuomi at open-xchange.com> wrote:

> > On 11 April 2019 16:45 Laura Smith via dovecot < dovecot at dovecot.org> wrote:
> >
> > On Thursday, April 11, 2019 2:02 PM, Aki Tuomi < aki.tuomi at open-xchange.com> wrote:
> >
> > > PAM is trying to lookup user at domain while you probably only have user. PAM driver does not yet support username_format. 
> >
> > > Aki
> >
> > But /etc/dovecot/users file isn't pam ?   I don't need pam if if I'm using /etc/dovecot/users ?  Or am I understanding you wrong?
>
> you have passdb block using pam. it is involved in the lookup process. 

Well, I didn't but it seems to be the default example config (i.e its in auth-system.conf.ext, not my local.cf).

I commented it out, but now I get
"auth: Fatal: No passdbs specified in configuration file. LOGIN mechanism needs one"

What am I missing to make it look in /etc/dovecot/users ?  My local.cf came from a known-good server so I don't understand why it hasn't implemented the changes that need to be done on this new one ?   What parameters am I missing ?   I'm lost and exhausted by struggling with dovecot these last few days.