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In the short term, either go to it or find someone you trust to sit at the keyboard and follow your instructions...

After that, I think there are kits for servers that will give you remote keyboard access. I can't remember exactly what they're called, but google for "remote kvm bios" because they give you keyboard access on boot so you can even dink with the bios...

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"kvp" won't give you much. "kvm" stands for "keyboard, video, mouse"

Pack my bags and drive my but over there or depend a trusty employee that can follow instructions over the phone. If there is no way for me to drive my but over there and I do not trust any employee to enter a few lines, I will create a machine that provides my vision and hands.

I think grub has a way access from a serial port.

The real grub config file is menu.lst not grub.conf.

You should run updates on testing machine then make a backup to be used on the production computer if everything works out on the testing machine.

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