Appendix C. Upgrading Red Hat Linux from a
serial console
Upgrades to Linux distributions are frequently released. A
machine is not remotely manageable unless these upgrades can be
installed without needing to physically touch the machine.
This section examines the remote installation and remote
upgrade of Red Hat Linux.
Red Hat Linux can be installed over
the network from a HTTP server using an install
diskette. We modify this diskette to use the serial console. If we
can control whether to boot from this diskette or from the hard disk
then we can remotely upgrade the Red Hat Linux distribution from the
serial port. If a blank diskette is placed in the drive when the
machine is deployed then no on-site intervention is needed to
upgrade the operating system.
If you have upgrade procedures for other
Linux distributions please contribute
them to the HOWTO maintainer.