fixit disc for 7.3 #1?

[Da Rock]

On 02/15/12 10:08, Gary Kline wrote:
> guys,
>
> is there still a  way of fixing something i did to my existing
> installation?  it does nothing but continually cycle e and try to
> reboot into the old release i had from feb 2011.  i thought editing
> out /etc/fstab would do it.  but nope, it throws me into the lowest
> level manual config and then hangs.  i cannot even install release 9.0
> which is the only other path.  either some stable distro of debian,
> or getting past release8 and going to   9.
>
> first, tho, i need to get rid of this [[messed up]] 7.3.
>
> let me share a story from when i was visiting a favorite cousin who
> put up about half of NASA's huge antennas.  long retired, he lives
> out where not even god could find him.  he wanted to see proof of my
> beloved freebsd.  so, using a new set of discs that i bought, i
> started the installation.  { FWIW, --this was in july, 2000.  }  I
> happened to mention that freebsd had trouble configuring the
> printers.  or that   that could get hairy.  he stopped what he was
> doing and asked me to get back to his windows toys and games.  i had
> a floppy w ith the mystery file "MBR" that removed that single file.
>
> my hunch is that since i never mess with anything but freebsd, i
> left it configure itself by default and that the same thing that
> stalled me for ten minutes back in 2000, might be what's stopping
> me from installing anything over my 7.3 in 2012.
>
> any wizards how how to fix  this?
Are you sure you can't backup your important files and start again? You 
might have a good deal of trouble jumping by 2 major releases at the 
best of times.

Also, 9.0 is significantly different in many ways to 7.x in dir 
structure _and_ filesystems, to just mention a few. I new (clean) 
install would be _highly_ recommended ;)