build/installworld for remote server

i have a colocated server, so i do not have physical access, with FreeBSD 4.5-RELEASE installed, now i want to update with build/installworld to -STABLE. every time i have done this before i would drop to single user mode before "make installworld" but now with no physical access i can't really use single-user, so i am wondering how safe it is to do the entire update in normal multi-user?

-jondoor

Best solution: ask your colo-provider to give you serial console access to your FreeBSD boxes.

Second-best solution: do the buildworld, buildkernel, installkernel as per normal. Reboot to multi-user to fire up the new kernel. Then kill off as many processes as you can without disconnecting yourself, and make sure there's no one but you signed in. Do the installworld, mergemaster, reboot as per normal.

So long as there aren't a mass of processes running in the background, the above works great. I've done this on a few headless boxes I have lying around to test the procedure. We'll be doing the above with our remote boxes once 4.6 is released.

thanks i'll be giving it a try soon enough.