"perl -e /.firstboot | echo $?"
[download]

has a number of problems.

• $? is interpolated before ssh and thus the shell will ever see it.
• Perl doesn't accept a program on the command line unless you use its -e option.
• String literals generally need to be quoted in Perl.
• You never tell Perl to exit with an error, so $? will never be set properly.

The above should be

q{perl -e'exit(-e "/.firstboot" ?1:0)' | echo $?}
[download]

which can be simplified to

q{perl -e'print -e "/.firstboot" ?1:0'}
[download]

But why not just use the shell?

q{test ! -e /.firstboot ; echo $?}
   -or-
q{if [ -e /.firstboot ] ; then echo 1 ; else echo 0 ; fi}
[download]

Also, you didn't specify what should be returned when it cannot be determined whether the file exists or not.

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