The Monks here were kind enough to help me get Net::OpenSSH installed on an older system where updates were, uh, problematic. But I was further stymied by the age of the underlying ssh client, which was incompatible. So I offer the following:

sub ops_do_ssh_qx {
   my ($cmd) = @_;

   $cmd->{ssh_cmd} = 'ssh ' .  $cmd->{user} . '\@' . $cmd->{host} . ' 
+\'' . $cmd->{command} . '\'' . ' 2>/dev/null';

   $cmd->{output} = qx($cmd->{ssh_cmd});
   if ( defined $cmd->{output} ) {
      $cmd->{cmd_ret_code} = $?;
      chomp $cmd->{output};
   }
   else {
      ($cmd->{ssh_ret_code}, $cmd->{ssh_ret_msg}) = (0 + $!, '' . $!);
   }

   return $cmd;
}
[download]

It does rely on ssh keys being setup properly.

I hope you find it useful.

Thanks,
cbeckley