RedHat 7.2 + openldap security advisor => openldap 1.10alpha3 breaks down

[Juha Y. <juh...@no...>]

We've been using Joe Little's old python-ldap 1.10alpha3 RPM packages
(and versions, which we have rebuilt from same source RPM). This
solution has worked beatifully all the way upto openldap 2.0.11.
Then we got that security advisory from RedHat
(http://www.redhat.com/support/errata/RHSA-2002-014.html)

Since then we've been in following kind of situation:
Python 1.5.2 (#1, Jul  5 2001, 03:02:19)  [GCC 2.96 20000731 (Red Hat
Linux 7.1
2 on linux-i386
Copyright 1991-1995 Stichting Mathematisch Centrum, Amsterdam
>>> import ldap
Traceback (innermost last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
  File "/usr/lib/python1.5/site-packages/python-ldap/ldap.py", line 2,
in ?
    from _ldap import __version__
ImportError: /lib/libcrypt.so`: shared object not open
>>>

At first we tried to get around by rebuilding python-ldap package, but
that didn't seem to solve the problem. When we checked for new
python-ldap versions, they all seemed to require python 2.x, which is
understandable considering how long python 2.x versions have been out
and as such they won't solve our immediate problem. As far as I've
understood RedHat is planning to keep their default python version at
1.5.2 until they come up with RedHat Linux 8.x box and for that reason,
we would like to avoid version upgrade as well.

So, if anyone has been able to get python-ldap to work in RedHat 7.2
Linux box with python 1.5.2 and openldap 2.0.21, I'd like to hear about
it. 

P.S. Yes, I know that python2 package exists, but if upgrade python-ldap
to depend on it, we would also have to upgrade py-gtk, py-gnome, ...

-- 
Juha Ylitalo         juh...@no...         <work e-mail>
+358 40 562 6152     juh...@ik...              <rest of e-mail>
"Some tools are used, because its policy, others because they are good."