I've often thought that a large fraction of what LDAP does could be replaced by a /etc/passwd.d/ directory, with individual files for user accounts. Then the accounts could be synced without issue or race conditions. And it'd be much simpler to work with than that bloated protocol.
I've been getting into my homelab with proxmox recently, and that sounds like exactly what I wish I could do. I tried setting up an ldap server but it was way too complicated for my use case.
