So two things here. The first is that it sounds like you want to be using `/opt`. The second, is that I am able to create root folders, I just have to remount

So two things here. The first is that it sounds like you want to be using `/opt`. The second, is that I am able to create root folders, I just have to remount as rw before creating it and after that I can mount any data folder to `/foo`. I'm not entirely clear why not having `/` as rw by default is such an issue, but you are cetainly not prevented from doing it if you wanted to.