The default configuration file for dovecot-1.0_beta9 (/etc/dovecot.conf) refers to an example SQL configuration file "doc/dovecot-sql.conf", but that file does not exist in /usr/share/doc/dovecot-1.0_beta9.
# equery files dovecot | grep dovecot-sql.conf /usr/share/doc/dovecot-1.0_beta9/dovecot-sql.conf.gz
Huh, odd. Here's what my system shows: # equery files dovecot | grep /usr/share/doc/dovecot-1.0_beta9/ /usr/share/doc/dovecot-1.0_beta9/AUTHORS.gz /usr/share/doc/dovecot-1.0_beta9/NEWS.gz /usr/share/doc/dovecot-1.0_beta9/README.gz /usr/share/doc/dovecot-1.0_beta9/TODO.gz /usr/share/doc/dovecot-1.0_beta9/auth-protocol.txt.gz /usr/share/doc/dovecot-1.0_beta9/auth.txt.gz /usr/share/doc/dovecot-1.0_beta9/configuration.txt.gz /usr/share/doc/dovecot-1.0_beta9/design.txt.gz /usr/share/doc/dovecot-1.0_beta9/dovecot-example.conf.gz /usr/share/doc/dovecot-1.0_beta9/dovecot-ldap.conf.gz /usr/share/doc/dovecot-1.0_beta9/dovecot-openssl.cnf.gz /usr/share/doc/dovecot-1.0_beta9/index.txt.gz /usr/share/doc/dovecot-1.0_beta9/mail-storages.txt.gz /usr/share/doc/dovecot-1.0_beta9/mkcert.sh.gz /usr/share/doc/dovecot-1.0_beta9/multiaccess.txt.gz /usr/share/doc/dovecot-1.0_beta9/nfs.txt.gz /usr/share/doc/dovecot-1.0_beta9/securecoding.txt.gz /usr/share/doc/dovecot-1.0_beta9/variables.txt.gz I'll try re-emerging and look closely at the output to see if something funny is going on.
OK, the error is that the ebuild moves ldap and sql config files out of doc into /etc if you have those USE flags.
Committed fixes back to beta9 - re-sync in two hours to get the updates, no version bump.