I wrote:

>   in the FreeBSD ports there's something called "GtkPod" which I'll now 
> evaluate and see if it also works with the Shuffle.  If it works, it's 
> most likely not much of an effort to (have someone) port it to pkgsrc.

Unfortunately gtkpod doesn't work with the shuffle... it can read the db 
and stuff but doesn't sync properly.  Apparently the file(s) and/or 
their formats are slightly different from the bigger ipods.  I'll now 
look for alternatives... next try: gnupod.

mkb.