Rh 6.1 initial root password encryption

[Ken Barber]

The initial root password that is set in /etc/shadow by the Red Hat 6.1
installation program is in crypt-style, not MD5. This occurs even if you
have chosen MD5 encryption in the initial setup of RH.

A change of password _after_ initial setup changes the encryption to
MD5.

What does this mean? A seemingly long root password set by the
administrator is actually truncated to 8 characters.

ken@.