Refered to the article and went through the solutions. I’m sure the cluse to the answer is in the picture i linked above
after updloading a new login.php, i was able to actually get to the login screen this time by pointing my browser to wp-login.php, but the redirect to upgrade.php still happens
here is my server info
PHP Version 5.2.12
System – Linux infong 2.4 #1 SMP Wed Nov 4 21:12:12 UTC 2009 i686 GNU/Linux
Build Date – Dec 28 2009 09:10:43
Server API – CGI
did not find info on apache version
Client API library version 5.0.67
Client API header version 5.0.32
Mac os 10.6.2
Firefox 3.5.7
also tried on safari Version 4.0.4 (6531.21.10)