``In OpenLDAP 2.1 and 2.2 the checkpoint directive acts as follows - *when there is a write operation*, and more than <check> minutes have occurred since the last checkpoint, perform the checkpoint. If more than <check> minutes pass after a write without any other write operations occurring, no checkpoint is performed, so it's possible to lose the last write that occurred.''

In other words, a write operation occurring less than "check" minutes after the last checkpoint will not be checkpointed until the next write occurs after "check" minutes have passed since the checkpoint.

This has been modified in 2.3 to indeed checkpoint every so often; in the meantime a workaround is to invoke "db_checkpoint" from a cron script every so often, say 5 minutes.