Akom's Tech Ruminations

# gdm - GNOME Display Manager
#
# The display manager service manages the X servers running on the
# system, providing login and auto-login services

description     "GNOME Display Manager"
author          "William Jon McCann "

# I Commented these out:
#start on (filesystem
#         and started hal
#         and tty-device-added KERNEL=tty7
#         and (graphics-device-added or stopped udevtrigger))
#stop on runlevel [016]

emits starting-dm

respawn

script
    [ ! -f /etc/X11/default-display-manager -o "$(cat /etc/X11/default-display-manager 2>/dev/null)" = "/usr/sbin/gdm" ]

    # Check kernel command-line for inhibitors
    for ARG in $(cat /proc/cmdline)
    do
        case "${ARG}" in
            text|-s|s|S|single)
                exit 0
                ;;
        esac
    done

    if [ -r /etc/default/locale ]; then
        . /etc/default/locale
        export LANG LANGUAGE
    elif [ -r /etc/environment ]; then
        . /etc/environment
        export LANG LANGUAGE
    fi

    initctl emit starting-dm DM=gdm

    exec gdm-binary $CONFIG_FILE
end script

Notice that I commented out the start on and stop on lines. That took care of it. You can still start it with /etc/init.d/gdm start (or perhaps more correctly: initctl start gdm) but it won't start on boot.