authconfig defaults

If I need to make changes permanent in /etc/pam.d/system-auth on a RHEL4
system, I can only see 2 alternatives: Disable or remove authconfig from
the system, since it always replaces the system-auth file with what it
thinks are system defaults for this file, or recompile the source code
and replace the 2  *.pamd files with what I want as the defaults. Does
anyone else know of something else that can be done to disable removing
items that I have put into this file as defaults. 
David A. Kirkwood