I have been running a server for the past 5 years (?) using 7.10 Server without GUI. I haven't had any real issues, except that web crawlers are bogging my system down to a crawl. I found through searching that I can install the bw module for apache2 to limit bandwidth, but I need a higher version Ubuntu to do that.

Since this is a webserver with forums, a fresh install really isn't an option. I cannot upgrade using 'apt-get dist-upgrade' - it says the system IS up to date. I tried downloading the 8.04LTS server alternate CD, but there is no option to upgrade, only to install. I dropped to the command line (ESC since ALT-F2 does nothing) and tried to run 'gksu "sh /cdrom/cdromupgrade"' as directed here - https://help.ubuntu.com/community/HardyUpgrades - but that results in the error message "could not find kernel image: gksu". Actually, it tells me that for EVERY command I try, including ls.

I assume that I can't upgrade from 7.10 to 12.10LTS directly, so can someone please help? I would really appreciate it - as would my network!