Issue upgrading to 7.4, looking for guidance

[Sergio de Almeida Lenzi]

For me I used a "quick and dirty" solution for upgrade
1) build a machine (or a virtual one...) with the freebsd version you
want, for example=8.2 cvsup the kernel in /usr/src
2) export KERNCONF=xxxxxx the name of the kernel config file you want to
build
3) cd /usr/src;make buildworld buildkernel
4) mkdir /tmp/dist
5) export DESTDIR=/tmp/dist
6) make installworld installkernel
7) (cd /tmp/dist;tar cvzf - * ) > /tmp/newsystem.tar.gz
8) move the newsystem.tar.gz to the machine you want to upgrade
9) /rescue/tar -xpvf newsystem.tar.gz -C /

the system will not respond to comands any more because of rewrite of
almost all libs... 
so the solution is fastboot
When the system comes up, it shows the release you built from
this way you can go from 7.0 to 8.2 in one single step.
for me it worked in internet all times  but, you are warned: use at you
own risk...

Sergio