I experience this problem in Intrepid. To reproduce:

1. assume you've got a fully installed Ubuntu Intrepid
2. set up your wireless internet to connect to your encrypted access point
3. make sure your login keyring (or default keyring) has a password, and set it 
to unlock automatically on login
4. set your user up to autologin
5. REBOOT your machine
6. just after you're autologged in, you'll be asked for a password to unlock 
the default keyring

AFAICT, the reason it happens is: Gnome's keyring auto-unlocker uses
your login password to unlock the default keyring (if the passwords
match). So when you login with a password, everything works fine.
However, when you autologin, you don't type your password, so the auto-
unlocker isn't able to use it to unlock the keyring.

It's not immediately obvious how to solve this securely. But I don't think we 
should ignore this or treat it as a feature, because
 a) anyone who sets up to autologin obviously doesn't want to type in a 
password, so it defeats the purpose of autologin,
 b) it encourages people to set up their default keyring with an empty 
password, which is insecure. (This is what I've done!)

Tchalvak, I disagree that wireless passwords are a security non-issue. I
think they are an issue -- if people get access to my wireless access
point, then they can steal all my bandwidth. They may even be able to
sniff my traffic, I'm not sure. However, you're right: the convenience
of automatically connecting to a network outweighs the security issues
for most people.

-- 
libpam-keyring broken on autologins
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/137247
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