Thank you sgifford ! or perhaps should I say sgifford

nscd does indeed seem to be the "problem" When I apt-get install nscd on a non LDAPified system, the "problem" begins to occur.

An interesting bit, getent does actually seem to be going to the LDAP directory --at least it is listing things that aren't in /etc/passwd

For what it is worth, We'll probably be talking directly to the LDAP directory for our getpwnam purposes. Caching is a "feature" for 86370 seconds in our day.