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Wow, I wasn't aware of the chattr command at all. Here is a list of available: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chattr

Apparently, they are very file system specific. That's why they are not widely used. I guess a chmod 0444 would not do it, as system tools tend to "fix" wrong permissions automatically (but not permissive attributes).

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I use `chattr +i` with NFS mountpoints for backups, it prevents the local harddrive from filling up when a network share fails to mount on boot.

Totally. If something is meant to be a mount point, a chattr +i on the underlying directory is a godsend, because it gives you an immediate error in case the mount should fail for whatever reason.

You might be able to do it in a more system-agnostic manner with SELinux.

That would be less system-agnostic because you have to be running with SELinux as the LSM. The immutable attribute is supported on almost all filesystems.

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