When starting mysql, my server would start and then immediately stop. The problem was that the macports mysql config was set up to start mysql as a specific user.
I edited the cnf file /opt/local/etc/mysql5/my.cnf and changed the user to root. Then I ran sudo mysql_install_db5 and was then able to start the server. You could also just create the user that my.cnf is expecting.
Thanks for the helpful writeup Chad.