Rebuilding "world" without physical access

[Øystein Holmen]

I have usually followed the canonical way to update my system, as  
described in the handbook. But now I need to update a system that I  
cannot reach physically for a long time. Is there any way to do this?  
The system runs primarily as a webserver, and it doesn't have many  
users. Could I just stop apache and follow the canonical way, except  
I don't go into single user mode?

Sincerely,
Øystein Holmen