[support] Configure a module before it's enabled?

Is there any way to configure a module *before* it's enabled?

I just turned on the path module. I noticed that as soon as it's turned on, anybody is able to create path aliases. It was easy enough to reconfigure it to only allow admins to do that, but for a short while (between the time I enabled it and got to configure it), it was open to anybody.

For this, it's no big deal, but in general, it seems like a bit of a security hole. There should be some way to enable the configuration of a module before it's really turned on. Or is there, and I'm just missing it?

I'm running drupal 5.7.

-- roy@panix.com