F11: Spooky network manager

[lanas]

All,

  This could be a Halloween special but I'm afraid it's not.  This time
around it looks like I have to 'tango macabre' with the network manager
since the machine is a laptop.  If there's a way to use wifi w/o it,
please let me know !

  So basically it works but, after I enter the AP's WPA key, NM pops up
a dialog box with the caption: 'Enter password for default keyring to
unlock'.  I spent minutes and minutes at that dialog box entering user,
root and WPA passwords again and again (maybe I made a typo ?) to end up
pressing the 'deny' button and see the wifi connection up and running.
Of course, at the next boot it asked me to enter the WPA key again, as
well as the 'unlock' password to which I replied 'deny' again.  This is
instantly.

  So what is that NM thing wanting for password ?  Looks like no
existing password on the unit will satisfy it.  I have the impression
that once this is done, then it'll remember the AP key.

  If this is solved, then I'll like to enter a static IP for that
laptop (+ default gateway and DNS) for the wifi connection and I'm very
afraid of the nightmare I could run into.

  In the best of worlds, please let me know if there's a way to havce
wifi without this thing called network manager.  The laptop will always
use the same AP, so there's nothing fancy to be done.

Thanks for any suggestion and ideas.