I recently installed testing/etch and this problem was really one of the only problems that pissed me off. :)
It took a while to track this bug. I also went into gnome session to try disable the icon and network manager to no avail. I feel that is the path of the solution. Making the "disconnected" icon on a static IP easy to remove. Well I guess `sudo apt-get remove network-manager` is quite easy. Maybe somehow the install can tell the task list not to install network-manager if a static IP was used? First the boot log gave me a clue to getting rid of 'Network Manager'. Took me a while to realise these NetworkManager messages were coming from dbus. While I am here, what's the point of avahi? Doesn't dbus do avahi's job? Or vice versa? Thu Apr 5 18:13:45 2007: Starting Common Unix Printing System: cupsd. Thu Apr 5 18:13:45 2007: Starting system message bus: dbus. Thu Apr 5 18:13:46 2007: Starting Hardware abstraction layer: hald. Thu Apr 5 18:13:51 2007: Starting DHCP D-Bus daemon: dhcdbd. Thu Apr 5 18:13:51 2007: Starting network connection manager: NetworkManager. Thu Apr 5 18:13:51 2007: Starting Avahi mDNS/DNS-SD Daemon: avahi-daemon. Thu Apr 5 18:13:51 2007: Starting network events dispatcher: NetworkManagerDispatcher. Thu Apr 5 18:13:51 2007: Starting MTA: exim4. Thu Apr 5 18:13:57 2007: Starting internet superserver: inetd. Thu Apr 5 18:13:57 2007: Starting OpenBSD Secure Shell server: sshd. Thu Apr 5 18:13:57 2007: Starting GNOME Display Manager: gdm. Thu Apr 5 18:13:58 2007: Starting NFS common utilities: statd. Thu Apr 5 18:13:59 2007: Starting anac(h)ronistic cron: anacron. Thu Apr 5 18:14:00 2007: Starting deferred execution scheduler: atd. Thu Apr 5 18:14:00 2007: Starting periodic command scheduler: crond. Anyway, I think the NetworkManager bootup message could be clearer by referring to dbus. Something like: Starting DBUS network connection manager: NetworkManager. Starting DBUS network events dispatcher: NetworkManagerDispatcher. Best wishes, -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]