HP-UX Directory Server 8.1 Administrator (766147-001, March 2014)

The nsslapd-state attribute can also be set to referral on update. This means that
the database is used for all operations except update requests. When a client application
makes an update request to a suffix set to referral on update, the client receives a
referral.
For more information about the suffix configuration attributes, see Table 2 (page 37).
96 Configuring Directory Databases