In a newly installed system, if you try to replace sys-libs/pam (Linux-PAM) with sys-auth/pam (OpenPAM), sys-libs/pam-1.0.1 is emerged as well as a dependency. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. emerge -C sys-libs/pam 2. emerge -av sys-auth/openpam This is probably because openpam RDEPENDs on pambase which in turn somehow brings sys-auth/pam as a dependency. By removing pambase from the RDEPEND list, openpam was emerged successfully. I'm not sure whether the problem is in openpam or pambase but I filed this bug under openpam... It's true that since there are no pam modules to work with openpam, it's not a good idea to remove LinuxPAM altogether, but since both provide the same functionality the user should at least be able to choose to remove either one.
It depends on the USE flags enabled on pambase, some make use of Linux-PAM-specific features, like sha512, which thus require sys-libs/pam and don't accept pambase.
(In reply to comment #1) > It depends on the USE flags enabled on pambase, some make use of > Linux-PAM-specific features, like sha512, which thus require sys-libs/pam and > don't accept pambase. > After fiddling a little bit more with this issue I came to the conclusion that the problem is somehow related the virtual/pam package. Even emerging openpam with all pambase USE flags disabled, I get the following message : [blocks B ] >=sys-libs/pam-0.78 ("virtual/pam" is blocking sys-auth/openpam-20071221) (for the complete log check http://rafb.net/p/bKnRei65.html)
openpam isnt intended to be used on linux