I have this issue with SuSE 9.2 (sorry, but I love the old desktop). Because this is purchased version of SuSE, its full of software. I installed it one year back and all was OK. But now root mounts read only. I am prompted to do:
mount -n -o remount,rw /
Of course this is done but then I have to exit, it reboots in same RO mode.