I am trying to eliminate the error "No such file or directory" which is currently a result of having users listed in my /etc/passwd file and not having a corresponding Maildir for it. I've started using the userdb, but I'm not sure if/how courier is using it.
Exactly the same as the passwd file. There is a direct one-to-one correspondence of fields in userdb, and fields in the passwd file (plus userdb defines a few more optional fields too).
userdb and ran makeuserdb. Does courier need to be started after running makeuserdb?
No.
Does courier look in userdb and then in /etc/passwd or does it sound like courier is not using userdb at this point in my configuration at all?
It depends on the configuration. It can be done either way.
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