single-user mode isn't?

["William S. Gribble" <grib@cs.utexas.edu>]

I've been going through some hardware configuration problems and
bouncing the machine a lot to fix/shuffle hardware.  During one 
iteration, I brought the machine up with the main ethernet interface
disconnected.  Normally, /home is nfs mounted over this interface.
No problem, I thought -- just tell lilo to boot in single-user mode,
at the prompt type ``linux single''.

Unfortunately for me, entering single user mode seems to run
/etc/init.d/boot, which not only initializes the network but also 
mounts all local and remote filesystems.  

Is it appropriate to do all this mounting so early in the boot
process?  My expectation is that in single-user mode you get a shell
on the console with the root filesystem mounted and that's it.  You
don't do single-user boot unless something's broken already, so
getting into the system should avoid doing anything that could cause
more problems.  If you want to start up the network, you do it by
hand; if you want to mount filesystems, the same.

Am I misunderstanding how the single-user run level (1) is supposed to
work under Sys V init?

Thanks,
Bill Gribble