upgrading systems w/o physical access?

[Bill McGonigle]

So, I've decided it's time to upgrade my Redhat 9 "company server" to 
the latest Fedora Core.  Here's the catch: it's hosted in a data center 
in New York.

Were it here I'd bring it down, pop in the DVD and go.  On the hosted 
system, I have access to a serial console via ssh, and there's a Debian 
disc in the CD-ROM drive I can boot onto.

I'm wondering if there's an 'official' or even 'best practices' way to 
do this.

The best I've come up with is to install FC4 onto a machine here, boot 
onto the Debian CD on the server, and restore a tarball over the net on 
top of it, adjusting grub as needed.  And hope the hardware is similar 
enough for it to come up.

But that's a hack as much as any other.

I've done the yum upgrade route before, and the RPM-naming conflicts 
are enough of a pain that I'd like to avoid that method.

How have others handled this situation, or do you all host within 
driving distance?

-Bill
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Bill McGonigle, Owner           Work: 603.448.4440
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