Edgy -> Hardy Upgrade, suggestions?

[Mario Vukelic]

On Fri, 2008-08-29 at 17:51 +0100, James Cummings wrote:
> I need to upgrade a server machine which has sat stable (and protected
> behind a firewall) using Edgy Eft.

Edgy is unsupported by now: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Releases

>   I want to upgrade it to Hardy
> Heron and am wondering the 'best' way to go about it.  

Usually this:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Installation/UpgradeFromOldVersion

However, I don't know whether this works anymore, since the Edgy
repositores are gone, as far as I know.

> What I'm
> particularly concerned about is this is a VMWare virtual machine,
> halfway around the world from me, so I don't want to get into a
> situation where it has rebooted or killed my ssh session
> unnecessarily.

Can't you set up a VM installation exactly as you want it, and then
transfer the VM file to the target location, so that it just has to be
booted?

> 1) It doesn't seem to want to do any updates any more.. are edgy
> repositories now no more? 

See above

> 2) Is there a way to skip steps and move directly to hardy or
> something, or do I have to do each upgrade of edgy  -> feisty -> gutsy
> ->hardy

If it works at all, you would still have to do stepwise upgrades, 6.10
-> 7.04 -> 7.10 -> 8.04. A royal pain.

> 3) Should I just negotiate with the people there to have someone wipe
> the VM and start again with a fresh Hardy install? Rather than try an
> in-place upgrade?  While this is possible it is politically
> frustrating (the VM is donated to a not-for-profit academic
> organisation).

See above, is it not possible to transfer the virtual disk?