I'm getting the same issue here after upgrading to ubuntu 11.10
I get this error in the error log:
2011-10-15 16:08:14 master: Error: service(auth): command startup failed, throttling
I didn't use the distribution config file when upgrading. I converted it using the documentation found here:
http://wiki2.dovecot.org/Upgrading/2.0
That doesn't seem to work still.
I found this command, but it doesn't help me to much:
$ doveadm auth -x service=imap -x lip=127.0.0.1 john
Password:
doveadm(root): Error: Timeout waiting for handshake from auth server. my pid=21412, input bytes=0
doveadm(root): Fatal: Couldn't connect to auth socket