Thanks xenoxaos, if I understand what you're saying, format an extra thumbdrive to ext2, extract rootfs from the E02, then modify?  I'm sorry if I'm not following along.  As a side note, I found this forum post that looked promising: 
viewtopic.php?f=18&t=3490&hilit=ubifs&start=10, but I got "mount: special device /dev/mtdblock2 does not exist" and then it was suggested to me to try: 
mkdir /tmp/pogo 
mount -t ubifs -o rw ubi0:rootfs /tmp/pogo 
From there, edit the shadow file.  But that also was a dead end, evidently alarm doesn't support ubifs or at least, I can't find a package that does.