how to remote update 4.10 -> 5.3?

[Palle Girgensohn]

--On onsdag, december 29, 2004 12.36.01 -0800 Brooks Davis 
<brooks at one-eyed-alien.net> wrote:

> On Wed, Dec 29, 2004 at 09:30:37PM +0100, Palle Girgensohn wrote:
>> Has anyone managed to update a 4.10 system to 5.3 remotely, i.e. without
>> console access, and without spare disk partitions?
>>
>> I have a bunch of 4.10 machines that are too far away for me to actually
>> do  the update hands on. I've tried it on a test machine, it fails half
>> way  through installworld, and really needs single user mode to succeed.
>> The  install procedure fails since it starts using the newly installed
>> stuff,  things like sh(1) and test(1), and they cannot find their
>> libc.so.5, I  guess...
>>
>> One idea I have is copying / and /usr to some other place and set
>> ldconfig  and PATH=some/other/place and when building and installing.
>> Haven't tried  it yet, thought I'd hear anyone on this list has a better
>> suggestion?
>>
>> Optimally, there would a couple of gigs on a separate spare disk
>> partition  so I could just install everything there and use it upon
>> reboot. Problem  is, there is no such space. :(
>
> In general, my suggestion would be, don't do that.  Do you really need
> to upgrade?  Remember, 4.11 is likely to be supported for security
> upgrades into early 2006 so if your machines are working and you don't
> really need the new functionality, I'd suggest avoiding an upgrade.

Well, I need wide char support, as in iswlower and the likes. Maybe I could 
use some portability lib or similar...? Ideas?

BTW, do you mean that 5.3 is not stable enough, or just that it is a 
nuisance to upgrade? While I agree that 4.10 is very stable, a lot of 
things have improved with 5.x...

/Palle