I've made some progress! It seems that the current Gentoo ebuild didn't create some required directories.

by using:

strings /usr/sbin/courier

I noticed one path that didn't exist /var/lib/courier/tmp so I did:

mkdir /var/lib/courier/tmp chown mail:mail /var/lib/courier/tmp /etc/init.d/courier-authlib restart

and this time it didn't complain about a missing file or directory. But in the logs it showed:

May 26 10:46:22 [courierd] Loading STATIC transport module libraries. May 26 10:46:22 [courierd] Courier 0.48.1 Copyright 1999-2004 Double Precision, Inc. May 26 10:46:22 [courierd] Installing [0/0] May 26 10:46:22 [courierd] Installing uucp May 26 10:46:22 [courierd] Installed: module.uucp - Courier 0.48.1 Copyright 1999-2004 Double Precision, Inc. May 26 10:46:22 [courierd] Installing local May 26 10:46:22 [courierd] Installed: module.local - Courier 0.48.1 Copyright 1999-2004 Double Precision, Inc. May 26 10:46:22 [courierd] Installing fax May 26 10:46:22 [courierd] Installed: module.fax - Courier 0.48.1 Copyright 1999-2004 Double Precision, Inc. May 26 10:46:22 [courierd] Installing esmtp May 26 10:46:22 [courierd] Installed: module.esmtp - Courier 0.48.1 Copyright 1999-2004 Double Precision, Inc. May 26 10:46:22 [courierd] Installing dsn May 26 10:46:22 [courierd] Installed: module.dsn - Courier 0.48.1 Copyright 1999-2004 Double Precision, Inc. May 26 10:46:22 [courierd] Initializing uucp May 26 10:46:22 [courierd] Initializing local May 26 10:46:22 [courierd] Initializing fax May 26 10:46:22 [courierd] Initializing esmtp May 26 10:46:22 [courierd] Initializing dsn May 26 10:46:22 [courierd] Started ./courieruucp, pid=25414, maxdels=4, maxhost=4, maxrcpt=16 May 26 10:46:22 [courierd] Started ./courierlocal, pid=25415, maxdels=10, maxhost=4, maxrcpt=1 May 26 10:46:22 [courierd] Started ./courierfax, pid=25462, maxdels=1, maxhost=1, maxrcpt=1 May 26 10:46:22 [courierd] Started ./courieresmtp, pid=25472, maxdels=40, maxhost=4, maxrcpt=100 May 26 10:46:22 [courierd] Started ./courierdsn, pid=25482, maxdels=4, maxhost=1, maxrcpt=1 May 26 10:46:22 [courierd] queuelo=200, queuehi=400 May 26 10:46:23 [courierd] Purging /var/lib/courier/msgq May 26 10:46:23 [courierd] Purging /var/lib/courier/msgs May 26 10:46:23 [courierd] No such file or directory May 26 10:46:23 [courierd] ABNORMAL TERMINATION, exit status: 1 May 26 10:46:23 [courierd] Will restart in 60 seconds.

I checked and it did create the /var/lib/courier/msgq directory automaticaly but not the other one. So I created it.

mkdir /var/lib/courier/msgs chown mail:mail /var/lib/courier/msgs

and it started clean :-)

I can even send email to the outside world :-) But not to myself yet :-( I must have screwed up something with the local delivery but it's getting close... :-)