Comment 6 for bug 431176

If I understand the fix correctly, this is a bad idea.

It used to be, until recently (karmic bleeding edge), that I could boot the recovery option,
do my stuff in single-user mode, and proceed to a graphical boot.
But now, not only GDM doesn't run by itself, running it manually appears to have no effect!
I'm forced to reboot in normal mode to get GDM.

/etc/init/gdm.conf is the wrong place to do this decision.
It causes a manual "start gdm" to silently fail!

The correct way to not start gdm automatically would be to boot into a different runlevel.
IIRC on debian runlevels 2 and 3 (?) don't include GDM.

And it's not clear that single-user "recovery" mode is a 1:1 indication that a text-only mode is desired.
- If generally useful, it could be a (third?) option in the boot menu.
- If sometimes useful after recovery, the "Resume normal boot" menu option could be split into
   2 options: "Resume normal graphical boot" vs. "Resume boot to text-only login."
- If the motivating desire is convenience of recovery work with full-fledged login,
  maybe the recovery menu should be enhanced to offer many consoles, job control etc.
  (I got used to automatically start single-user work with several "openvt" commands.)