how to remote update 4.10 -> 5.3?

[Palle Girgensohn]

Hi!

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. :(

Thanks
Palle