upgrading from ubuntu 9.04 to 9.10 (Jaunty to Karmic)

The upgrade
Please make sure you have the following sources.list (/etc/apt/sources.list remove all other entries you have there).

# Required
deb http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ jaunty main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ jaunty-updates main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ jaunty-security main restricted universe multiverse

Update the package list and upgrade all the installed packages

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

Perform the release upgrade.

sudo do-release-upgrade

you will get an error

do-release-upgrade 
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. 

you can inspect the metadata for releases and you need to replace with release old-releases prefix (fixed by me)

to look like this for karmik (supported with old repository url)

Dist: karmic
Name: Karmic Koala
Version: 9.10
Date: Thu, 29 Oct 2009 12:00:00 UTC
Supported: 1
Description: This is the 9.10 release
Release-File: http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/karmic/Release
ReleaseNotes: http://changelogs.ubuntu.com/EOLReleaseAnnouncement
UpgradeTool: http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/karmic-proposed/main/dist-upgrader-all/0.126.9/karmic.tar.gz
UpgradeToolSignature: http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/karmic-proposed/main/dist-upgrader-all/0.126.9/karmic.tar.gz.gpg

wget https://raw.github.com/gist/1170565/22117e03db295388b507c59ea3f84a11bc4e9ff0/metarelease.rvg -O /etc/meta-release.rvg

Modified /etc/update-manager/meta-release so that it pointed to my local file rather than the incorrect URI on the ubuntu site - here is what it looked like after my change:

[METARELEASE]
URI = file:///etc/meta-release.rvg
URI_LTS = http://changelogs.ubuntu.com/meta-release-lts
URI_UNSTABLE_POSTFIX = -development
URI_PROPOSED_POSTFIX = -proposed

I then ran do-release-upgrade and everything worked like a charm

Next is to upgrade to 10.04 LTS , you can follow the generic instructions , no tricks needed