I appreciate that this may not be the right way to go about it but I have managed to get this to work for me.

I currently have Ubuntu running on an old computer which I use as a file-server, ftp -server, http intranet server and fuppes media server. I was set to auto login and run fuppes on startup so that all I had to do was switch on and everything worked. I would use VNC to control the server and did not need a keyboard or screen attached to the server.

I recently upgraded to 10.04 Lucid and found I had the annoying problem that it would not connect to the network without putting in my password again to unlock the key-ring which meant that I could not use VNC to control the server. I tried different methods including setting the keyring password to nul (blank) and playing with "sudo apt-get install libpam-keyring" but without any success. So in desperation, I stopped the keyring apps from starting in the first place.

System|Preferences|Startup Applications:

unticked the following:
Bluetooth Manager - Don't need it, not running anything bluetooth.
Certificate and Key Storage.
Secret Storage Service..
Ubuntu One - Don't need it
Visual Assistance - Don't need it.

Now, it runs and connects without issue or password request. Just tested ftp and that works fine too. Http working fine. Shared directories are fine. Now I just need to get my fuppes to run on startup and I'll be happy.

If you need to use "Certificate and Key Storage" and "Secret Storage Service" then this probably won't help you but I think it would indicate that there is a problem either with these services or the way they communicate with other services. I confess to being a complete Ubuntu noob but I hope this points people in the right direction.