I created a new repository and fired up the command: fossil server /path/to/proj.db

When I try to login on port 8080 I get the following error message:

unable to open database file
REPLACE INTO config(name,value) VALUES('captcha-secret', lower(hex(randomblob(20))));

I tried the precompiled version and compiled the source myself. The result is the same. OS is a Debian 5 standard system. 

Help appreciated.