Re: [CentOS] how to prevent files and directories from being deleted?

Best practises also involve to generally not delete files unless you can be sure that they can be deleted. That is probably what the FHS intended by specifying that files in /var/run must be deleted/truncated at boot time, assuming that the programs that created them would do this (and then create them anew if needed), which can be assumed to be reasonably safe since it implies that unknown files remain.

For all I know, someones life could depend on a file that was placed somewhere mistakenly.

What a strawman. You mean that person would still be alive if the file disappeared during boot rather than shutdown?

jl