Root password problem

[Adam Mooz <adam.mooz@gmail.com>]

Hey list,

 

First post! :)

 

So I'm building a faily-specialized live-cd which requires that I am able to get root access when the disk is booted.  I've done just about everything I can think of to get this going, following the suggestions on the wiki, I cannot change the root password or the password for the user I set.  I've used hook scripts to manually modify the root password in the shadow file to trying to sed-ing "root:x:" to become "root::" in /etc/passwd to set the root password to be blank, no luck!

 

So I tried a clean build, no options.  I ran:

lh_config && lh_build and booted from that ISO, the rood password has been set to something. 

 

How can I set the root password to be blank, or better yet a pre-defined password?  The disk I'm building needs to be relatively secure so a root password would be ideal.  Allowing sudo su access might not be the best idea for the implementation so in the final disk I'd like to avoid using sudo. 

 

If I remember my debian-live disks properly the root password is autoscrambled on boot, which is, I think, why my attempts are being thwarted. 

 

Thanks,

Adam.