[metapost] mpost does not work

[Karl Berry]

      $ kpsewhich mpost.mem

Sadly, kpsewhich mpost.mem does not return anything in my installation,
where mpost works fine and mpost.mem is present in the right place
(/usr/local/texlive/2008/texmf-var/web2c/metapost/mpost.mem in my case).
The same for kpsewhich tex.fmt, et al.  I'll look into that.

Anyway, for the present problem, I think the most reliable approach is
to use system tools (such as locate and find, or whatever MacOSX
provides) to find all the mpost.mem files and delete them.  Then try
running
  mpost '\end'
and hopefully the .mem will be autocreated in the right place.

However, you said you installed TL via MacPorts.  I have no way of
knowing what changes were made by the MacPorts folks, but I gather from
other posts they are nontrivial.  So the fmtutil[-sys] command may not
be the right thing.

As a big hammer, you might consider installing the original MacTeX from
http://tug.org/mactex.  But hopefully the above will suffice.

Best,
Karl