[gentoo-catalyst] Passwords

Is there a simple way to set the root password from within the fsscript
that doesn't require the use of expect? A friend of mine that builds
clusters for IBM gave me the following, he uses it in his kickstarts but
this doesn't work for me. 

 

echo "password" | /usr/bin/passwd --stdin administrator

 

passwd takes the --s from stdin to mean the shell flag, and well that's
sort of unfriendly if you know what I mean. Any suggestions?

 

Paul