Question

Well. I have a large basis on which to go. I just dont know how to go about it. using the exec() function. But I think I’d really just need help doing a remote SSH. The rest I already sorta understand

I have a perl script on 5 servers that need to be updated, and the best way to automate this is from the admin panel on a remote server.

The php file needs to collect the servers ips, username, passwords + the .pl’s directory from a MySQL while also sending the post data that was just sent, and then send that data via SSH (from each variable) with the command to execute the remote perl script with the post data (from the php file) as an argument.

Basically: PHP(+post data) -> SQL(gets table info) -> perl -> (SSH -> perl)[repeat until no more servers are left to update]

The faster and simpler it does this, the better. If any steps can be removed to speed it up, then great, unless it makes it less secure.

I really do not get how to do much of this, as I’m still trying to learn Perl and SQL

Answer 1

You can setup ssh password-less authentication between your servers, have your scripts setup and tested in the same path on different servers, and in your PHP script write

for($hostname in $hosts)
    system("ssh $hostname -c 'perl /path/to/my/script.pl'")

Or you could setup public/private key identity files and do:

for($hostname in $hosts)
    system("ssh $hostname -i ~/.ssh/identity_file -c 'perl /path/to/my/script.pl'")