[GRASSLIST:5421] questions with vectors in grass6

[Carlos Henrique Grohmann]

Hello all, I am in an 'experience' time with grass6beta and there are some
questions: 

I have a political map of south america, and I'd like to create a raster mask of
it, but when I convert to raster, only the lines are there. In GRASS 5.4 there
was a command, v.line2area, that was perfect for it. How to do it in 6.0?
Can I merge all polygons in a single one? how?

thanks in advance

Carlos
-- 
+----------------------------------------------------------+
          Carlos Henrique Grohmann - Guano  
   Geologist M.Sc - Doctorate Student at IGc-USP - Brazil
        Linux User #89721  - guano at usp dot br
+----------------------------------------------------------+