Ubuntu – How to upgrade a remote server from 8.10 to newer version

I have a remote server still running Ubuntu 8.10 9.04 that I can only access via SSH.

If I run apt-get update I get a bunch of 404 errors on the packages. I've asked a few questions on Server Fault but got nowhere. Here's what I've done:

1. Run apt-get update which returns errors like:

   Err http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com intrepid/main Packages
   404 Not Found
   [and same for many other packages]

2. Run do-release-upgrade which returns:

   Checking for a new ubuntu release
   Failed Upgrade tool signature
   Failed Upgrade tool
   Done downloading
   extracting 'jaunty.tar.gz'
   Failed to extract
   Extracting the upgrade failed. There may be a problem with the network or with the server.

3. Edited /etc/update-manager/release-upgrades and changed from Prompt=normal to Prompt=lts (as suggested here). Running do-release-upgrade after this returns:

   Checking for a new ubuntu release
   current dist not found in meta-release file
   No new release found

4. (Updated) I have followed the advice in this question and changed /etc/apt/sources.list to refer to jaunty instead of intrepid. However, that distro is not online anymore either. A comment there says I have to upgrade in chronological order…

So basically, it seems like I cannot upgrade because my current distro is out of date and not supported. Is there a way to upgrade direct to 10.x or 11.x? Note, as this is a server I only have command-line access.

UPDATE 24/11: I have managed to upgrade from 8.10 to 9.04. Ubuntu's EOL Upgrades page provides some alternate URLs for apt sources. I also needed to update /var/lib/update-manager/meta-release to point to the old-releases server too.

However, now I cannot upgrade from 9.04 to 9.10. Running do-release-upgrade produces the same error as #2 above, except it "Failed to fetch" (the URLs in meta-release are valid). The Ubuntu Jaunty upgrade page says it's necessary to upgrade using a CD image. I followed the instructions here, but it didn't work:

A fatal error occurred

Please report this as a bug and include the files
/var/log/dist-upgrade/main.log and /var/log/dist-upgrade/apt.log in
your report. The upgrade is now aborted. Your original sources.list
was saved in /etc/apt/sources.list.distUpgrade.

Traceback (most recent call last):

File "/tmp/tmp.JLhTwVUugb/karmic", line 7, in
sys.exit(main())

File "/tmp/tmp.JLhTwVUugb/DistUpgradeMain.py", line 132, in main if
app.run():

File "/tmp/tmp.JLhTwVUugb/DistUpgradeController.py", line 1590, in
run return self.fullUpgrade()

File "/tmp/tmp.JLhTwVUugb/DistUpgradeController.py", line 1506, in
fullUpgrade if not self.doPostInitialUpdate():

File "/tmp/tmp.JLhTwVUugb/DistUpgradeController.py", line 762, in
doPostInitialUpdate self.quirks.run("PostInitialUpdate")

File "/tmp/tmp.JLhTwVUugb/DistUpgradeQuirks.py", line 83, in run for
plugin in self.plugin_manager.get_plugins(condition):

File "/tmp/tmp.JLhTwVUugb/computerjanitor/plugin.py", line 167, in
get_plugins filenames = self.get_plugin_files()

File "/tmp/tmp.JLhTwVUugb/computerjanitor/plugin.py", line 120, in
get_plugin_files basenames = [x for x in os.listdir(dirname)

OSError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: './plugins'

It does say to report the bug, but since this is an old unsupported release I don't know if it's worth doing. However, is there a way round this, to upgrade from 9.04 to 9.10 (And then finally to 10.04 LTS.)