I just added a reply in Bugzilla to your report of this.
Here, I can get nscd to work with "host: files ldap dns", but I had to restart it after I changed nsswitch.conf.
Ok: I finally got it (hopefully):
I missed that some libldap does a reverse lookup on the ip number in ldap.conf (or the like).
So I need to add the ldap-server in /etc/hosts avoiding the endless loop (and nscd so ping will not stop in futex).
If you are going to use LDAP for host resolution you should use an IP number rather than a hostname in authconfig. Or, to change it later, edit the entry in /etc/ldap.conf and /etc/openldap/ldap.conf and replace the hostname with its IP number.
--
Nigel Wade, System Administrator, Space Plasma Physics Group,
University of Leicester, Leicester, LE1 7RH, UK
E-mail : nmw@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Phone : +44 (0)116 2523548, Fax : +44 (0)116 2523555