Why am I always asked to unlock my login keyring at startup?

I'm using the xfce window manager and reboot and shutdown seem to work normally.

However, whenever I log back in, I always see the following:

Why do I always see this message? I would expect that my screen would be blank or at least be locked up, but nothing like that happens. What's the point of entering my password again?

Your keyring is separate from your login credentials. In Ubuntu (which I'm guessing you're using), there has always been confusion on this issue. If you make your log in password the same as your key ring password, it should fix the issue.

This could be a PAM problem.

Authentication providers/packages need to change the PAM configuration files to plug themselves into the authentication process. However, some of them give no consideration to other PAM plug-ins and prematurely terminate the pipeline disabling your keyring's PAM module.

Thus your keyring never got your password when you log-in so it must ask you again.

You may want to check the /etc/pam.d/ files and manually fix them. The error is probably in the common-* files. Look for the line that uses the rogue "sufficient" keyword in the second column. If you want to manually fix this, you can follow the instructions in man pam.d.

Normally keyring gets unlocked when you enter your password while logging in. Then gnome-keyring-daemon process starts and manages it.

The gnome-keyring-daemon process is a user process (not a system service), so when you log out you kill all your processes (including the gnome-keyring-daemon). When you log in you start a new gnome-keyring-daemon process which needs your password to open your keyring.

If you have "autologin" then this is normal. Keyring cannot be unlocked because you have not entered the password. That's it.