ext4 and data loss

Indeed fsck.ext[234] is perfectly happy to modify a read-only-mounted /.
It even has special behaviour (messages and exit codes) to tell you when
you have to reboot because it just modified a mounted filesystem.

I still think it's a disgusting cheap hack sanctified only because that's
the only way Unix systems have traditionally been able to fsck /. Now
Linux has early userspace, there is no excuse for it at all other than
back-compatibility with people who don't have an initramfs or initrd (how
many of them are there? Not many, I'd wager).