Venerable monks, I come seeking wisdom of a middling nature. I am attempting to create a script to automate a very tedious set of manual steps done through an SSH connection to a RHEL machine. I am developing on a Windows laptop running Windows 7 and ActiveState Perl 5.16.1 Build 1601. I am in the first stages, where I am attempting to use a test script to learn the ins and outs of Net::SSH2. I can get my script to login to the machine. I can get it to do things like "ls" and print the output. Where I am getting stuck is on 3 parts: (1) the first command I run, no matter what it is, doesn't seem to run - nothing prints on my command window; (2) running a command (like another Perl script) that produces output - capturing that output and processing it further; and (3) when I try #2, my whole script blows up (see output). One more oddity is that I am getting "Term type is now linux" in my second channel run output. My code follows:

#!C:/Perl/bin/perl.exe

use strict;
use warnings;
use Net::SSH2;

my $BE_conn;
my $BE_ip;
my $BE_chan;
my $out;

$BE_ip="nnn.n.nn.nnn";


$BE_conn = Net::SSH2->new();

$BE_conn->debug(0);

$BE_conn->connect($BE_ip) or die "BE_conn: $!\n";

$BE_conn->auth_password('user','pass') or die "Unable to login to BE\n
+";
    $BE_chan = $BE_conn->channel();
    $BE_chan->blocking(0);
    $BE_chan->shell();

    #Next 2 lines needed or $BE_chan only gets "Term type is now linux
+"
    #Note that NOTHING prints preceded by "CHAN LINE" to my window
    print $BE_chan "\nwho am i\n";
    print "CHAN LINE: $_" while <$BE_chan>;

    #Run a simple command, test process the output with regex
    print $BE_chan "\nls /u/ainet\n";
    while ( <$BE_chan> ) { $out .= $_; }
    print "DEBUG: \$out = $out\n";
    if ( $out =~ m/^.*tar.*$/m ) {
        print "Found \"tar\" files in \$out...\n";
    }
    $out = "";

    #Run second simple command to ensure $out works still
    print $BE_chan "\nls /opt/config/servers/0-0-1/local/root/etc/sysc
+onfig/network-scripts\n";
    while ( <$BE_chan> ) { $out .= $_; }
    print "DEBUG: \$out = $out\n";
    if ( $out =~ m/^.*netba.*$/m ) {
        print "Found \"netba\" files in \$out...\n";
    }
    $out = "";

    #Run a script, capture the output, regex it
    #print $BE_chan "\n/u/ainet/BatchPing.pl pinglist tcp\n";
    #while ( <$BE_chan> ) { $out .= $_; }
    #print "DEBUG: \$out = $out\n";
    #if ( $out =~ m/^.*NOT.*$/m ) {
    #    print "Found \"NOT\" lines in \$out...\n";
    #}
    #$out = "";
    
    $BE_chan->close;
[download]

When I run my script with the last section commented, I see these results (file names redacted - this is business related):

C:\Users\ImJustAFriend\Documents\Perl>LDAP-Config.pl
DEBUG: $out = Term type is now linux
script1.pl
application
script2.pl
file1.tar
backup1.tar
backup2.tar
backup3.tar
pinglist

Found "tar" files in $out...
DEBUG: $out = ifcfg-if01
ifcfg-if02
ifcfg-if03
ifcfg-if04
ifcfg-if05
ifcfg-if06
ifcfg-if07
ifcfg-if08
ifcfg-if09
ifcfg-if10
ifcfg-if11
ifcfg-if12
ifcfg-if13
ifcfg-if14
ifcfg-if15
ifcfg-if16
ifcfg-if17
ifcfg-if18
ifcfg-if19
ifcfg-if20
ifcfg-if21
ifcfg-if22
ifcfg-if23
ifcfg-if24
ifcfg-if25
ifcfg-if26
ifcfg-if27
ifcfg-if28
route-if29
route-if30
route-if31

Found "netba" files in $out...
[download]

When I run my script with the last section not commented, I get this output instead:

C:\Users\ImJustAFriend\Documents\Perl>LDAP-Config.pl
DEBUG: $out = Term type is now linux

DEBUG: $out = script1.pl
application
script2.pl
file1.tar
backup1.tar
backup2.tar
backup3.tar
pinglist
ifcfg-if01
ifcfg-if02
ifcfg-if03
ifcfg-if04
ifcfg-if05
ifcfg-if06
ifcfg-if07
ifcfg-if08
ifcfg-if09
ifcfg-if10
ifcfg-if11
ifcfg-if12
ifcfg-if13
ifcfg-if14
ifcfg-if15
ifcfg-if16
ifcfg-if17
ifcfg-if18
ifcfg-if19
ifcfg-if20
ifcfg-if21
ifcfg-if22
ifcfg-if23
ifcfg-if24
ifcfg-if25
ifcfg-if26
ifcfg-if27
ifcfg-if28
route-if29
route-if30
route-if31
[download]

Can someone please help me see the error of my ways? I tried the application example in the Net::SSH2 documentation (semi-daemonizing) but that didn't work either...

Thanks in advance!!
ImJustAFriend