If the jpegPhoto or thumbnailPhoto attribute is not set or empty, then users can upload and manage their avatars on their ownCloud Personal pages. Avatars managed in ownCloud are not stored in LDAP.
I was mostly looking for confirmation from anyone else experiencing similar symptoms and feedback as to whether a bug report was wanted over at GitHub · Where software is built
Since I have found no open or closed reports of this symptom in the Github issues, I can migrate the details from my OP into an issue.
just did a fresh install of 10.0.9 today.
confirmed the same issue, unable to change profile pix for LDAP user.
for us, LDAP users has profile pix defined in thumbnailPhoto on LDAP, however photo does not get loaded into owncloud.
would be nice if owncloud has to option to 1) load photo from LDAP 2) upload its own photo 3) using avatars like in previous version.
Version 0.12.0 published to the marketplace on 4 Nov 2018 restores the expected functionality, although finding the clickable portion of the buttons may be tricky due to a CSS overlap bug in OC core.