[tex-live] Is tlmgr 2008 now completely unusable?

[B Wooster]

I had texlive 2008 working for a year now, and decided I needed to
update it and install some new packages.

No luck - first it complained about unusable installation network
locations - they were looking for .../tlnet/2008, but I checked a few
sites there was no 2008 under tlnet anymore, Some email messages
suggested that 2008 is no longer maintained - but does this mean that
we cannot update even within 2008 anymore?

Then I tried running update-tlmgr-latest.sh
It too fails, now with different messages:
Unknown category Documentation for package texlive-common found.
Please update texlive.infra.
...
etc.

Is there any way to make tlmgr run on my what-was-working texlive 2008
system? I can live without updates, but wanted to install some new
packages.