Tyrone,
You should be able to do a
/sbin/e-smith/db configuration setprop ldap status disable
replace disable with enable to re-activate it.
I'd be interested to know how the edirectory install on SME goes. I would imagine that the initial install might be ok, but what happens after you do a
/sbin/e-smith/signal-event console-save? Does anything get messed up because of the templates doing their thing?
GL,
JB