Here's are my notes on what I did:
# I needed to find where the cvs urls were set so I grepped in /sw
cd /sw
grep -R fink.cvs.sourceforge.net *
# That eventually turned up the following potential places to make changes:
lib/fink/URL/anonymous-cvs:fink.cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/fink
lib/fink/URL/cvs-repository:fink.cvs.sourceforge.net
lib/fink/URL/developer-cvs:fink.cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/fink
lib/perl5/Fink/SelfUpdate/CVS.pm: my $cvsrepository = "fink.cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/fink";
# Since I only needed to get package descriptions I figured /sw/lib/fink/URL/anonymous-cvs
# was the file I wanted change to handle my port-forward solution.
cd /sw/lib/fink/URL/
sudo cp anonymous-cvs anonymous-cvs.orig
nano -wz anonymous-cvs
# Here I changed: fink.cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/fink to: localhost:/cvsroot/fink
# Then it was a simple matter to create an ssh tunnel to an external server where I have
# the ability to login and its port 2401 is not blocked.
ssh login@domian.example -L 2401:fink.cvs.sourceforge.net:2401
# Finally, I ran the fink update command:
fink selfupdate-cvs
# Hooray. Now everything works as expected and I probaly don't need to use it again unless I need
# to update package descriptions sometime in the future. So, I changed things back:
cd /sw/lib/fink/URL/
sudo mv anonymous-cvs anonymous-cvs.custom
sudo mv anonymous-cvs.orig anonymous-cvs
# Probably I should create a shell alias like: finkselfupdatecvs to handle it all when I
# I find I want to update package descriptions again. But I'm too lazy and besides, that's
# why I've put it in my blog.
