Probably less "cool", but I've previously installed to older i386 machines by just putting their hard disks in a newer amd64 machine that could boot from USB.
If you are still interested in a more complex setup, several people have install scripts that could help you not miss any steps you might forget in a manual install, e.g.: http://mirror.isoc.org.il/pub/netbsd/misc/kamil/autoinst.sh (I have not tried it myself so cannot testify for it) I imagine it is also possible to execute these steps in single user. On Mon, Aug 15, 2016 at 07:15:01PM +0100, Steve Blinkhorn wrote: > I have two servers I have just retrieved from their regular home in a > data centre some distance away. (Less tha opportune interventions by > the staff there meant they would not accept remote logins). > > While I have them here I want to upgrade them to 7.0 (i386). But one is > 2.0, the other 3.0 at present. > > It looks as though they will not boot from their USB ports, the > CD-ROM drives seem not to be DVD-compatible (and I'm not sure I can > find any blank CD-ROM disks). They have floppy drives, but I'm not > sure I have a working floppy drive on a working machine any more. > > I have both the machines running normally, and I've backed up everything I > need to keep. Is there a way of upgrading these machines by placing > initial installation files on their hard drives, say in a /altboot > directory, bootin from there and doing the rest over NFS or FTP? I > have to do an install because I think both machines need new boot > blocks to even boot newer releases. I also need to change the disk > layout to add more swap space and create /tmp on disk rather than in an > MFS. > > I am under time pressure because these two machines form the backbone > of live 24/7/365 services, now being run on VPSs in their absence. > > -- > Steve Blinkhorn <[email protected]>
