Also, no servers of any kind can exist on the target machines.

What I have been trying to do is use open3 to telnet to the target machines, tail the log file specified by the user, print that output to a file opened by the program then exit the telnet session and move on to the next machine.

Well, the machines are apparently already running telnet servers. Are there any other servers that are already running that might make your job easier? Maybe rshd or a webserver?

As it looks like you are interested in syslog, maybe you should explore other options. Setting up a centralized syslog server might make sense in your case.

-sauoq
"My two cents aren't worth a dime.";