Deferring operation messages

[Dawn Lovell <dlovell@centurytel.com>]

Please forgive the newbie question; I haven't been able to find
anything specific to it in the archives.

We're running a replica slapd process (OpenLDAP 2.0.11) on a server
that is being used to test a LDAP-enabled mail routing/POP3 config.
The machine is running Solaris 8, but we are using the nss_ldap
module from padl.com.  We're currently using sendmail 8.11.4 for
the MTA and qmail-ldap for POP3 service.  All three hit the local
slapd instance for their queries (via loopback interface).

We haven't run into any noticeable problems with the mail service,
but are seeing recurring (from every 5 minutes to every hour or so)
"deferring operation" messages in the slapd syslog output.  I'm
not a C programmer, unfortunately, so my interpretation of the
source is probably off-base... but it appears that the message
occurs when an operation comes in on a connection that is in the
process of binding or closing?  If true, would that likely be the
result of a configuration problem, or...?

Since the operation appears to be put into a pending queue and
presumably processed, I'm not sure serious this is.  Could this
be a signal that as we put increasing load on the server, we may
reach a point at which it will start dropping queries?

I'm including some debug output at the end of this message.  Any
information or assistance you could offer would be greatly
appreciated.  Thanks for your time!

Dawn Lovell
dlovell@centurytel.com

Debug (-d 256) output:

conn=10 op=3 SRCH base="dc=centurytel,dc=com" scope=2 filter="(&(objectClass=inetLocalMailRecipient)(mailLocalAddress=user1)(gecos=active))"
ber_flush: 14 bytes to sd 21
conn=10 op=3 SEARCH RESULT tag=101 err=0 text=
daemon: conn=11 fd=22 connection from IP=127.0.0.1:34940 (IP=:: 389) accepted.
conn=11 op=0 BIND dn="UID=SEARCHUSER,DC=CENTURYTEL,DC=COM" method=128
ber_flush: 14 bytes to sd 22
conn=11 op=0 RESULT tag=97 err=0 text=
deferring operation
conn=10 op=1 SEARCH RESULT tag=101 err=0 text=
conn=-1 fd=20 closed
conn=11 op=1 SRCH base="dc=centurytel,dc=com" scope=2 filter="(&(objectClass=posixAccount)(uid=user1))"
ber_flush: 325 bytes to sd 22
ber_flush: 14 bytes to sd 22
conn=11 op=1 SEARCH RESULT tag=101 err=0 text=