Cannot preseed a locked password

[Christian Perrier <bubulle@debian.org>]

> Wasn't there a way of preseeding that the password should be locked? 
> (apologies if this was already mentioned, I missed the beginning of the 
> discussion).
> 
> I thought this was to set the passwd/root-password-crypted  as "*" , but this 

Hmmm, well I never really tested this, but any string in
root-password-crypted is actually inserted in /etc/shadow unchanged.

So, I suppose that, if it doesn't work, there's probably some missing
escaping magic somewhere.

I suspect this in passwd.config:
				.../...
			    ROOT_PW=''
			else
			    # The root password was preseeded encrypted
			    # Clear it from the db, then set it
			    db_set passwd/root-password-crypted ""
			    ROOT_PW=$RET
			    setpassword root "$ROOT_PW" true
			    ROOT_PW=''
			fi
			        .../...

Probably 'ROOT_PW="$RET" would be better anyway. Typical shell
programming error from me, I'm afraid.

Anyone to confirm?