Know nothing about RH servers but generally UNIX looks at /etc/nsswitch.conf file:
so I suppose if you put files before ldap it may be happy...
Code:
# /etc/nsswitch.conf sample
#
# @(#)B.11.11_LR
#
# An example file that could be copied over to /etc/nsswitch.conf; it
# does not use any name services.
#
passwd: files LDAP
group: files LDAP
hosts: files [NOTFOUND=continue] dns
services: files ...
networks: files
...
