Fixing wireless association problems on RHEL

My notebook is running on Red Hat Enterprise Linux. 5.2 This is very nice on the one hand, as I do have stable software and it's very unlikely that I'll kill my system with a yum update call right before having a presentation. That happened in the past when running rawhide, but that's perfectly okay. I just have different requirements now.
On the other hand, being on a stable operating system means I'm not having access to the latest and greatest releases of all software. A problem users on Debian stable are well acquainted with.

One of the problems I'm having is with NetworkManager 0.6.4-8.el5. One of the wireless networks I'm using is changing it's keys each quarter. This is actually a good idea. Unfortunately, NetworkManager on some systems seems not to be able to associate to the wireless network after the first keychange.
It's trying again and again to associate, asks for a new password but even though the new password/hex-key is entered, no association is possible.

A quick workaround is possible though requiring removal of the password and the network data from the Gnome keyring as well as the gconf registry. After this has been done, NetworkManager is able to associate with the wireless network:

Make sure that the gnome-keyring-manager as well as the gconftool-2 binaries are installed:

[root@localhost ~]# rpm -q gnome-keyring-manager GConf2
gnome-keyring-manager-2.16.0-3.el5
GConf2-2.14.0-9.el5
[root@localhost ~]#

The next step is to remove the wireless network from the Gnome registry with the help of gconftools-2. Substitute <network-name> accordingly:

[athienem@localhost ~]$ gconftool-2 --recursive-unset /system/networking/wireless/networks/<network-name>
[athienem@localhost ~]$

The next step is to fire up gnome-keyring-manager from the shell or the Applications-menu under "System-Tools". Navigate to the entry named "Passphrase for wireless network <network-name>", select it and click on the "Keyring" entry in the menu and choose "Delete Key".
Close gnome-keyring-manager.

You're done. Now NetworkManager has lost all knowledge about the existing wireless network and the entry can be added again as usual. NM should be able to associate then.