If you are trying to use the pkg search command on a FreeBSD system and you receive an error message saying "The search target requires INDEX-9. Please run make index or make fetchindex," it means that the package database on your system is not up to date.
To resolve this issue, you can update the package database by running the make index or make fetchindex command. These commands will update the package database and create the necessary index files that are used by the pkg search command.
Here is an example of how to update the package database using the make fetchindex command:
make fetchindex
This will download the latest package database from the FreeBSD servers and create the necessary index files.
Alternatively, you can use the pkg update command to update the package database. This command will update the package database and download any available updates for installed packages.
pkg update
After updating the package database, you should be able to use the pkg search command without any errors.