help troubleshooting

[scar <scar@drigon.com>]

I have inherited an LDAP server and admittedly do not have all the 
technical expertise to troubleshoot the problems we have.

We are using slapd 2.4.40.

The first problem is nobody but the rootdn can change passwords.  We'd 
like to use "passwd" utility on our servers to change our passwords but 
the error is "LDAP password information update failed: Insufficient access"

In slapd.conf we have (i have removed our dc for privacy):

access to attrs=userPassword
        by self write
        by anonymous auth
        by dn="cn=Manager,dc=X,dc=Y,dc=Z" write
        by * none

access to *
        by self write
        by dn="cn=Manager,dc=X,dc=Y,dc=Z" write
        by * read
        by * auth

access to *
        by dn="uid=ldapadmin,dc=X,dc=Y,dc=Z" read


"cn=Manager,dc=X,dc=Y,dc=Z" is our rootdn and i have enabled logleve 128


However, this brings me to the next problem:  the contents of slapd.conf 
do not match the slapd.d/cn\=config.ldif file, so it seems the fixes i 
am trying to the ACL's don't have any effect, even when i restart slapd. 
 If i try "ldapmodify -nv" it just hangs.  When i try to stop slapd and 
remove slapd.d/* and then start slapd, the contents are recreated 
according to the config file, but then users can't login (all i see in 
the logfile is access_allowed and slap_access_allowed but no conn lines)

So some basic troubleshooting help would be appreciated!
Thanks