Infuriatingly brief slapd error message: sasl_server_init failed

[<Toby.Russell@vattenfall.de>]

Hello all,

There are actually tears in my eyes as I write this. Tears of bitter
disappointment and frustration. I have been fighting with sasl for
weeks...

I understand that the following error (upon starting slapd):

Feb 14 11:23:18 sdoraxx6396 slapd[9024]: sasl_server_init failed 
Feb 14 11:23:18 sdoraxx6396 slapd[9024]: slapd stopped.

arises because my sasl installation is not fulsome. The problem is, SuSE
installed sasl for me (SLES9 x64), and there is no testsaslauthd, let
alone a test-server or test-client, anywhere to be found -- I can't test
sasl. 

saslauthd starts ok:

ps -ef |grep sasl
root     10355     1  0 12:41 ?        00:00:00 /usr/sbin/saslauthd -a
kerberos5
root     10356 10355  0 12:41 ?        00:00:00 /usr/sbin/saslauthd -a
kerberos5
root     10357 10355  0 12:41 ?        00:00:00 /usr/sbin/saslauthd -a
kerberos5
root     10358 10355  0 12:41 ?        00:00:00 /usr/sbin/saslauthd -a
kerberos5
root     10359 10355  0 12:41 ?        00:00:00 /usr/sbin/saslauthd -a
kerberos5

(saslauthd will not start with gssapi as its mechanism.)

Kerberos works perfectly. This is my slapd.conf:

keytab: /etc/krb5.keytab
mech_list: gssapi
pwcheck_method: saslauthd
log_level: 4

/etc/krb5.keytab is there, otherwise kerberos wouldn't work. mech_list
is supposed to be gssapi, as far as I understand, but i get the same
result with kerberos5 there. If the problem is that saslauthd won't
start with gssapi as its mech, how might I fix that problem?

Cheers aplenty

Toby