Rainer Weikusat <rainerweikusat@???> wrote:

> There are really only two options:
>
> 1. Don't mount or mount r/o and require user interfaction prior to
> working with these variables.
>
> 2. Mount r/w and expect people messing around with the fs as superuser
> to know what they're doing.

Or the third option - mount r/o and remount r/w when needed. IIRC you can switch an already mounted filesystem from r/o to r/w 'on the fly' (ie without unmounting it first) - is the reverse possible (ie change a r/w mount to r/o) ?

Given that it's only a very very small number of programs that actually need this ability, it does seem that the "sensible" way is to make those few programs do a tiny bit of extra work and make the system safe.