Ah, you're right. But slapd should not have crashed during that operation. @Chris: Could you reproduce all that with a recent OpenLDAP release?
As I noted, adding an EQUALITY rule to the attribute schema definition when it didn't have one prior means that the data for that attribute now has to have normalized values stored in the database, regardless of whether or not it is indexed. Schema changes when there is existing data can require a database reload for the system to function properly afterwards. Thus the reason an assert() was triggered and slapd exited (correctly).
--Quanah -- Quanah Gibson-Mount Product Architect Symas Corporation Packaged, certified, and supported LDAP solutions powered by OpenLDAP: <http://www.symas.com>