I'm trying to setup a machine to autostart at a given time, do record 
something and then shutdown.

Autostarting works with:

echo `date -d 'YYYY-MM-DD hh:mm:ss ' '+%s'` > /sys/class/rtc/rtc0/wakealarm

but this seems to work only if I put the computer in suspend mode (if I 
shutdown the computer does not come back to life). However, when the computer 
starts from suspend, the session is locked... and I am not there to unlock 
it.

I've searched TDE's control panel without luck. Is there a way to remove the 
auto-lock feature?

Thierry