revived ports collection, errors galore

[F. Even]

I am running a FreeBSD 4.0 box.  I had never updated the ports collection,
so it just kind of stopped working over time.

This last week, I got sick of installing some things by src, so I wiped out
the ports collection, and did a cvsup to create a new, modern, up to date
ports collection.

I executed "cvsup /usr/share/examples/cvsup/ports-supfile", with
ports-supfile looking like this:

*default host=cvsup10.us.FreeBSD.org
*default base=/usr
*default prefix=/usr
*default release=cvs tag=.
*default delete use-rel-suffix

ports-base
ports-dns
ports-mail
ports-net
ports-security
ports-shells
ports-sysutils
ports-www

Now, when I try to make anything, I get many errors.  I was trying to make
openssh-portable in this example (more after massive error dump):

[errors below]
[root at cerebus:/usr/ports/security/openssh-portable] make
Unknown modifier 'C'

Unknown modifier '['

Unknown modifier ']'

Unknown modifier 'C'

Unknown modifier '['

Unknown modifier ']'

Unknown modifier 'C'

Unknown modifier '['

Unknown modifier ']'

Unknown modifier 'C'

Unknown modifier '['

Unknown modifier ']'

Unknown modifier 'C'

Unknown modifier '['

Unknown modifier ']'

Unknown modifier 'C'

Unknown modifier '['

Unknown modifier ']'

Unknown modifier 'C'

Unknown modifier '['

Unknown modifier ']'

Unknown modifier 'C'

Unknown modifier '['

Unknown modifier ']'

Unknown modifier '/'

Unknown modifier '/'

Unknown modifier 'C'

Unknown modifier '['

Unknown modifier ']'

Unknown modifier 'C'

Unknown modifier '['

Unknown modifier ']'

Unknown modifier 'C'

Unknown modifier '['

Unknown modifier ']'

Unknown modifier 'C'

Unknown modifier '['

Unknown modifier ']'

Unknown modifier 'C'

Unknown modifier '['

Unknown modifier ']'

Unknown modifier 'U'

Unknown modifier 'U'

[snip about 100 more "unknown modifier U's"]

Unknown modifier 'L'

Unknown modifier 'L'

Unknown modifier 'L'

Unknown modifier 'L'

Unknown modifier 'L'

Unknown modifier 'L'

"/usr/ports/Mk/bsd.port.mk", line 10: Malformed conditional
(${XFREE86_HTML_MAN:L} == "yes")
Unknown modifier 'L'

"/usr/ports/Mk/bsd.port.mk", line 10: Need an operator
"/usr/ports/Mk/bsd.port.mk", line 4485: if-less endif
"/usr/ports/Mk/bsd.port.mk", line 4485: Need an operator
make: fatal errors encountered -- cannot continue
[/errors]

SO...this is annoying....but I figure I'll just grab the packages then and
install them.

Ah yes.....it gets better:

[root at cerebus:/apps/pkgs] pkg_add openssh-portable-3.7.1p2.tgz
pkg_add: bad command '@conflicts openssh-3.*'

[root at cerebus:/apps/pkgs] pkg_add openssh-3.6.1_5.tgz
pkg_add: bad command '@conflicts openssh-portable-*'


OK....I cannot for the life of me even figure out what is going on here much
less know how to fix it.  Can anyone illuminate this topic and help me make
my ports collection work?  I would be highly appreciative.

THANKS!!

Frank