I've just been bitten by this myself and got most of the way through the same debug as you until I found the problem to google for :-)
This is on a mostly sarge box (with some ldap backports), however the symptoms look identical. For me, just commenting out "ldap" from the groups entry of /etc/nsswitch.conf is sufficient - ldap can stay in the passwd and shadow sections. This post suggests an different workaround which I'll be trying: http://www.nabble.com/problem-to-startup-slapd-with-nss-enabled-and-local-ldap-server-t2501548.html Adrian -- Adrian Bridgett - [EMAIL PROTECTED] GPG key available on public key servers -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]