How to boot into command-line mode and keep other services unchanged

"It turns out I was barking up the wrong tree. The services were getting called, but my network wasn't being configured till I logged into GDM. This had a cascading effect on anything that expected a configured network.

I filed a bug-report on Ubuntu Launchpad, and looking at some other bug reports helped me understand what was happening with my system. The solution was:

I've figured out why the network was
configured on my other Ubuntu system,
and am consequently able to do the
same on this system: ""Available to all
users"" option was selected on the
default connection in the Network
Manager applet. This enabled the
system to configure the network even
though I'm not logged in through GDM.
I've verified that the network gets
configured on this system too when the
option is turned on.

On a side note, it would be nice if
available networks could be detected
and configured via console in a
similar manner to how the Network
Manager applet behaves. I guess that
now my network is auto-configured so I
can turn off GDM during boot and still
remotely connect to the system.

I was basically expecting the pre-configured wi-fi connection to work on console mode, but it turned out that wasn't a valid expectation. Networks configured through the Network Manager applet from within GNOME take effect only when the same user logs into GDM, or if ""Available to all users"" is selected on the connection. It's kinda non-intuitive but that's the way it is."

"On the console, there's cnetworkmanager, a CLI frontend to NM.

Get it here: http://vidner.net/martin/software/cnetworkmanager/"