Fedora preupgrade-cli fails

Fedora preupgrade-cli fails

I have an ancient version of Fedora which I'd like to upgrade. I have command line access only (through PuTTy on a Windows machine). From what I've read, preupgrade-cli is what I should be doing, but that always fails with the message "[Errno 256] No more mirrors to try."
[root@localhost ~]# cat /etc/fedora-release
Fedora release 9 (Sulphur)
[root@localhost ~]# preupgrade-cli
Loaded plugins: blacklist, refresh-packagekit, whiteout
Loaded plugins: refresh-packagekit
please give a release to try to pre-upgrade to
valid entries include:
   "Fedora 16 (Verne)"
   "Fedora 15 (Lovelock)"
   "Fedora 13 (Goddard)"
   "Fedora 11 (Leonidas)"
   "Fedora 12 (Constantine)"
   "Fedora 17 (Beefy Miracle)"
   "Fedora 14 (Laughlin)"
   "Fedora 10 (Cambridge)"
[root@localhost ~]# preupgrade-cli "Fedora 16 (Verne)"
Loaded plugins: blacklist, refresh-packagekit, whiteout
Loaded plugins: refresh-packagekit
preupgrade-main (mirrorlist)
  url: http://mirrors.fedoraproject.org/mirrorlist?repo=fedora-16&arch=$basearch
  now: http://mirrors.fedoraproject.org/mirrorlist?repo=fedora-16&arch=i386
preupgrade (mirrorlist)
  url: http://mirrors.fedoraproject.org/mirrorlist?path=pub/fedora/linux/releases/16/Fedora/$basearch/os/
  now: http://mirrors.fedoraproject.org/mirrorlist?path=pub/fedora/linux/releases/16/Fedora/i386/os/
preupgrade-updates-newkey (mirrorlist)
  url: http://mirrors.fedoraproject.org/mirrorlist?repo=updates-released-f16.newkey&arch=i386
  now: http://mirrors.fedoraproject.org/mirrorlist?repo=updates-released-f16.newkey&arch=i386
Can't set up new repo preupgrade-updates-newkey - removing
preupgrade-fedora (mirrorlist)
  url: http://mirrors.fedoraproject.org/mirrorlist?repo=fedora-16&arch=i386
  now: http://mirrors.fedoraproject.org/mirrorlist?repo=fedora-16&arch=i386
preupgrade-updates (mirrorlist)
  url: http://mirrors.fedoraproject.org/mirrorlist?repo=updates-released-f16&arch=i386
  now: http://mirrors.fedoraproject.org/mirrorlist?repo=updates-released-f16&arch=i386
Fetched treeinfo from http://ftp.heanet.ie/pub/fedora/linux/releases/16/Fedora/i386/os//.treeinfo
treeinfo timestamp: Thu Nov  3 03:11:15 2011
.treeinfo                                                                                                                                                                               |  906 B     00:00
/boot/upgrade/vmlinuz checksum OK
/boot/upgrade/initrd.img checksum OK
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/share/preupgrade/preupgrade-cli.py", line 305, in <module>
    pu.main(myrelease)
  File "/usr/share/preupgrade/preupgrade-cli.py", line 204, in main
    stage2file = self.retrieve_non_critical_files()
  File "/usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/preupgrade/__init__.py", line 556, in retrieve_non_critical_files
    self._retrieve_file(self.mainimage,targetdir)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/preupgrade/__init__.py", line 437, in _retrieve_file
    tmp = self.instgrab.urlopen(fileinfo)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/urlgrabber/mirror.py", line 417, in urlopen
    return self._mirror_try(func, url, kw)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/urlgrabber/mirror.py", line 390, in _mirror_try
    mirrorchoice = self._get_mirror(gr)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/u