problem getting Cyrus imapd to work

[Robert J. Rust]

Greetings -

I am attempting to get Cyrus imapd to work with mysql following the
following how-to document:
http://www.delouw.ch/linux/Postfix-Cyrus-Web-cyradm-HOWTO/html/install.html

I have tried using the same versions of the software as in the howto
(imapd-2.1.12, sasl-2.1.12, db-4.0.14, openssl-0.9.7b etc.) as well as what
are the latest (imapd-2.1.14, sasl-2.1.15, db-4.1.24, openssl-0.9.7b).  I
have gotten them to compile with (seemingly) no errors but 'master'
segfaults when attempting to start it.  All that appears in the logs is:

Jul 22 13:53:44 trinity master[8571]: setrlimit: Unable to set file
descriptors limit to -1: Operation not permitted
Jul 22 13:53:44 trinity master[8571]: retrying with 1024 (current max)
Jul 22 13:53:44 trinity master[8571]: process started
Jul 22 13:53:44 trinity master[8575]: about to exec
/usr/cyrus/bin/ctl_cyrusdb
Jul 22 13:53:44 trinity ctl_cyrusdb[8575]: recovering cyrus databases
Jul 22 13:53:45 trinity ctl_cyrusdb[8575]: done recovering cyrus databases

The server is a Debian Linux box with the latest "unstable" packages (yeah,
I know it's 'unstable', but I wanted recent software).
I would be happy to provide information about the software setup as
requested.  I read a hint that it might be related to having multiple
versions of db libraries on the system, but I don't know how to check and be
sure that's the problem (since I have stuff like perl that requires one
version and other packages that require a newer version).
Does anybody have suggestions on how to fix/troubleshoot this?

Robert