If you’re a Mac Poweruser and not already familiar with macports, this is great package I would highly recommend, especially if you’re a bit of a *nix terminal junkie.

Download and installation is a breeze. Click on the link for the dmg relative to your distro and it’s smooth sailing.

Once it’s installed however, you may run into a bit of a problem if you’re behind a corporate firewall.

sudo port -v selfupdate
[MacPorts] #21034: Warning: No index(es) found! Have you synced your source indexes?

This message is followed by what may seem to be gibberish, but is actually informative logging telling you that rsync is being blocked.

I found numerous blogs and articles with no resolution to this issue, including one of the references below. Never fear! The solution is simple, and even outlined in the macports site.

First, make sure you are a sudo or root user, or you won’t have access to change the files necessary. (I outlined this in this article on my site).

After install make sure you close and reopen any terminal windows you have running.

1) Navigate to /opt/local/etc/macports.
2) sudo vi sources.conf
3) arrow down to the bottom line, bottom left corner, press “i” for insert then “#” key on your keyboard.
4) arrow to the end of the link and press return key on the keyboard
5) enter alternative url for macports tarball (without the quotes) “http://www.macports.org/files/ports.tar.gz [default]”
6) hit esc key on keyboard, then shift+: (colon) and finally “wq” which should exit you from vi and save changes

Voila! That’s it. You should now be able to update successfully. Note down any other errors you may encounter and happy porting. 8)

References
macports install, http://www.macports.org/install.php
macports alternative tarball sync, https://trac.macports.org/wiki/howto/PortTreeTarball
macports configuration files guide, http://guide.macports.org/chunked/internals.configuration-files.html
macports general howto, https://trac.macports.org/wiki/howto
Old Nabble Post with some similar user issues, http://old.nabble.com/-MacPorts—21034%3A-Warning%3A-No-index(es)-found!-Have-you-synced-your-source-indexes–td25264855.html