upgrading MacPorts after updating from 10.6 to 10.9 - missing gnutar?

["René J.V. Bertin"]

So I uninstalled and cleaned my MacPorts installation as instructed and the called restore.tcl . Now builds are failing with

:debug:extract Executing command line:  cd "/Volumes/Debian/MacPorts/var/macports/build/_Volumes_Debian_MacPorts_var_macports_sources_rsync.macports.org_release_ports_devel_bsdmake/bsdmake/work" && /usr/bin/gzip -dc '/Volumes/Debian/MacPorts/var/macports/distfiles/bsdmake/bsdmake-24.tar.gz' | /usr/bin/gnutar --no-same-owner -xf - 
:info:extract sh: /usr/bin/gnutar: No such file or directory

Indeed I have no /usr/bin/gnutar, and I don't see where in the MacPorts conf files this parameters is set?