Trouble with selfupdate command

[Jeffry Killen]

Hi Y'all;

I have a very technical question that possible only hardcore mac
techies may be able to answer, if any are listening to this list
or if someone has a useful reference.

To begin:
I have a Macbook Pro circa 2009 and have not upgraded since OSX 1.5
for unwillingness to sacrifice a boat load of expensive proprietary  
software.

I do web base development, exclusively php on the server side.

Mac OSX comes with a pre installed Apache server. BUT
The php extension is not activated.
It requires activating the 'root' user account so the Apache
configuration file can be edited to allow Apache to load the
module. I have done all that and can use the local server as
a stand alone development environment.

I have significant experience with Linux and FreeBSD platforms
and some capability with terminal mode command line usage.

Now:
I installed a version of MacPorts on this machine which require
interactive use from a terminal window in which I can use the
root user account password.

I have done that and ran #ports
I got a interactive ports prompt
and ran selfupdate to update the ports

HOWEVER,
Mind you I AM logged into the terminal as the root user
and have run all the commands as root
I get the following message:

Error: User jekillen does not own /opt/local - try using sudo
Please run `port -v selfupdate' for details.
Error: /opt/local/bin/port: port selfupdate failed: User jekillen does  
not own /opt/local - try using sudo

So,
Any one know what I am talking about and has some useful advice?

( Flash pardon the pun, macports may have been installed as jekillen  
as the user. But why would the root user not be able to override?)

If you have gotten this far;
Thank you for time and attention
jekillen, Talent
www.jekillen.com