There's a certain mindset to be achieved in understanding cn=config / RTC, for sure.

I'm happening to be building up an updated config for an N-way multi-master setup, and having the occasion to revisit the OpenLDAP manual, the Zytrax LDAP book/site, and the ever-useful test suites in the source, I can say there's lots of good documentation out there... but it could always be better.

One item I can highly recommend is that once you convert to RTC format, don't ever touch the files on disk.  Oh, you can, for sure, but if you ever think about replication, there's so many lovely ways to shoot your servers it's crazy.  Been there, learnt that.

Regarding bootstrap -- the test suites show nicely how minimal it can be -- one slapadd to create the base cn=config and olcDatabase{0}config,cn=config,  and then start up the server and do the remaining configuration, including adding the schemas (presuming you've got them in .ldif format already.)  One rough edge not so obviously logged is the server (as of 2.4.25) needs a restart after adding an (hdb) database object/branch.  Replication has its own pointy edges as well along with TLS; I've spent hours chasing obscure TLS issues due to O/S dependent behaviors.

Regarding schemas -- it's a straightforward perl 1-liner to translate from .schema to .ldif format.  Then import and edit via ldapmodify as needed.

Hope this helps,

--Chan