Do I Need The Keychain Access.app?

So I'm running into an issue here that seems to be growing day by day. Running 10.3.9 in a network user environment the keychain seems to be a mounting issue for everyone. Basically what happens is users get prompted for keychain access consistantly when running Entourage 2004 and Safari. Now I know that both these apps store account info in the Keychain but whether the Keychain is locked or unlocked it seems that the dialog box pops up every few minutes requesting access to the users keychain, and no matter what credentials are used it says the the password is invalid.

As a workaround I tried dumping the login keychain form both the home directory and the macintosh HD:Library:Keychains directory and creating a new keychain based on the user who was logged in at the time. This didnt work either as it still kept hounding the user for access to the keychain, I tried various repairs to the keychain and file permissions and nothing worked.

As a last resort on a test machine (Dual 2GHz G5 10.3.9-fresh install) I dumped the Keychain Access app completely along with the login.keychain from the home directory. Launching Entourage prompted for the network login, which I entered along with selecting the option to store the password in the keychain. This led me to find a new login.keychain (that I now cant open since theres no keychain app) but now theres no longer a constant keychain pop-up, whether I'm in Entourage or Safari.

My question is then, based upon all this, is there even a need for the keychain app? Should I just remove it (along with the login.keychain in the home directory) from all the machines, especially since all the user permissions are network based anyway. I havent noticed any detriment thusfar to removing it and keeping it was just becoming a headache.

 

I did that in Safari, except that only seemed to have worked when the user didnt go to another site and fill in information then choose to have that infor saved. Once they did that the keychain headache started all over again. But the issue seems to have disappeared with dumping the app.

 

I tried that and unless I was logged in as the local admin that option to allow it access at any time was greyed out, this was even after trying to repair the keychain and creating a new one. For some reason that option wasnt allowed as a networked user.