Setting a default root password

Hey guys. During my auto install I want a default root password to be put in place. I checked numberous documentation and searched quite a bit and couldn't come up with anything. I was going to just do something like 'echo "password" | passwd root --stdin' in a post-install script but the 'passwd' included in SuSE does not support the --stdin option I've seen in the past. I would prefer not to hack up passwd to add this functionality as well. Am I missing something obvious? Is there anyway this can be done? Any help would be appreciated. Thanks, -Nick