seeking guidance with back-shell setup

[Elle Y Suzuki <esuzuki@law.berkeley.edu>]

hello,

my thunderbird does not appear to be using back-shell's searchexample.sh..?

i have compiled openldap on a desktop windows xp machine with the 
back-shell backend enabled without threads.

slapd.conf is configured as suggested in the file searchexample.conf at 
http://tinyurl.com/47t9ets.  i have added the file searchexample.sh from 
http://tinyurl.com/4823rtf in the appropriate directory.  i start up slapd,
/usr/local/libexec/slapd -d 256 -h ldap://localhost
and it appears to fire up:
$ /usr/local/libexec/slapd -d 256 -h ldap://localhost
@(#) $OpenLDAP: slapd 2.4.24 (Feb 14 2011 09:29:58)
.
.
.
WARNING: No dynamic config support for database shell.
slapd starting

i configured thunderbird with a localhost ldap directory server 
(localhost, port 389), leaving 'base dn' and 'bind dn' blank.

in attempting to test this searchexample.sh script, i open a new message 
and type an entry that i know appears in the /etc/passwd file.  i see 
output in my cygwin window that is running slapd with lines including 
"BIND", "SRCH", "SEARCH RESULT", etc., but the tbird compose message 
window's "To:" field shows a "<LDAP server search problem>" which i 
click on and produces a pop-up with

"Error code 32: No such object

Verify that the Base DN is correct, and then try again, or else contact 
your System Administrator. To verify that the Base DN is correct, from 
the Edit menu, choose Preferences, then choose Mail & Newsgroups, and 
then choose Addressing. Click Edit Directories, and select the LDAP 
server being used. Click Edit to display the Base DN."

however, if i were to include 'base dn' info in tbird, slapd output 
reports a 'fatal error' with a stack trace.

meanwhile, the slapd output is as follows:
conn=1002 op=3 SRCH base="" scope=2 deref=0 
filter="(|(cn=suzuki*)(mail=suzuki*)
(sn=suzuki*))"
conn=1002 op=3 SRCH attr=cn mail
conn=1002 op=3 SEARCH RESULT tag=101 err=32 nentries=0 text=

several questions arise:

1. should 'base dn' and/or 'bind dn' in tbird remain blank for localhost 
ldap?

2. aside from what is noted in searchexample.conf above, are any of the 
other lines necessary in slapd.conf (rootdn, index, directory -- slapd 
complains if directory is made available, despite the referenced file 
existing).

3. what else can i do to get tbird to make use of the searchexample.sh 
file and report as such in the slapd output?

4. in running slapd, i see the message,
"WARNING: No dynamic config support for database shell"
From this (similar) thread,
http://tinyurl.com/457tra6
do i understand correctly that i should still be able to utilize a shell 
backend, then?

my current goal is the following: get slapd to run with a shell backend 
and thunderbird on my local desktop.  our team's overall goal is to 
enable this setup on a linux server: we'd like to eliminate our ldap 
server and utilize this slapd+back-shell mechanism to access our oracle 
db for our ldap clients.  once we are able to get this all working with 
back-shell, we'd like to replace the shell role with php scripts.  any 
guidance on this task in general is greatly appreciated.

my apologies in advance for any silly questions: i am new to playing 
with (open)ldap, and have been staring at this problem for much too long.

thank you in advance.