putting things into context:
After applying patches and fetching files, then displaying the message showing that a file(s) could not be merged, pressing enter key, the vi editor opens up, displaying the following lines.
Code:
<<<<<<<<<Current version
video:*:44:username
==================
video:*:44:
new time:*:47:
idle time:*:48:
>>>>>>>>> 13.2-RELEASE
after deleting lines between the <<<< and >>>> (including the <<< and >>> lines and then writing the changes and quitting vi, a message then asks is this reasonable (yes/no)? hitting yes then the screen shows lines of files that will be deleted. Paging down using the space bar to the end of the file list is displayed (END) and highlighted. What is not clear, should there be some intervention or if this process is automated, which was the basis of my question.
I then followed covacat suggestion of hitting the q button this solved the matter and the process completed
NOTE: It would appear that this step is missing from the handbook and what to delete in the vi editor!
However, after the first reboot, the upgrade failed as it hung just after loading the kernel with the problem of framebuffer issue as reported on other posts on the forum. Even switching to the old kernel option on the boot menu still caused the boot to fail at the entropy and framebuffer stage of booting.
It would seem that between older versions and currently supported new versions, there have been some changes concerning support for CPUs and probably EFI in the code base. This means some older hardware will not be upgradable to newer versions of BSD, even though the CPUs are 64-bit.
Therefore I could not complete the upgrade from an older BSD version to a supported new version 13.2 or higher, as it would appear this could be a hardware compatibility issue.