I think this will be nailed once I figure out this issue.And it looks like I'm running into a major bug in the slightly dated version of dovecot debian uses: https://www.mail-archive.com/dovecot@dovecot.org/msg78825.html
And this: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=970692Though my error is slightly different. Instead of uid '0' I have no uid at all.