Ignoramus19021 wrote:

>>> I am not interested in BS lectures about security.
> And I would prefer to deal with an excrypted password.

Uhm...reread the two phrases above. Anyway, why not edit /etc/shadow
directly then?

awk -F':' -v OFS=':' '/^root/{$2=encryptedpassw}1' /etc/shadow > newshadow

--
D.