Turns out that I missed the small line in the README that mentioned HDB. The admin guide for 2.3 in 4.2.4 does not mention that HDB also requires Berkeley DB. So, it now works if expected if I use: ./configure --disable-bdb --disable-hdb Perhaps the bug is more with the documentation as hdb isn't even mentioned as a possible backend in table 5.2 in section 6.2.2.