Okay so I learned to turn on debugging form this post:
http://www.zeroshell.net/eng/forum/viewtopic.php?t=22
It turned out, when the ldapadd/ldapmodify command when executed, issued a:
Executing /usr/local/bin/ldapmodify -c -x -h 127.0.0.1 -D”cn=Manager,dc=noc,dc=crbs,dc=ucsd,dc=edu” -w ‘mypassword’ /tmp/shell_o7748 2>/tmp/kerbynet.err.7748
The ‘mypassword’ was instead pass on the command like as mypassword: ex:
Executing /usr/local/bin/ldapmodify -c -x -h 127.0.0.1 -D”cn=Manager,dc=noc,dc=crbs,dc=ucsd,dc=edu” -w mypassword /tmp/shell_o7748 2>/tmp/kerbynet.err.7748
without any of the quotes, it does it properly with the quote for the simple password. So a complex password with semi-colon doesn’t get parse properly by the command line. I think this is a bug. Changed my password to something simple solved the problem.