Thanks for your reply. I do take your points but let me try and explain a bit better what I'm trying to do.

I have been coding something (in Perl) like Webmin which enables an Adminstrator to set up an apache instance by configuring it in a browser. So far, I've got it to create the apache config, and import this to CVS through a series of forms where the user is asked to fill in brief details e.g. ServerName, Listen, etc.

The next step I want it to do is deploy the instance to the remote server where it's going to run.

I could probably do this quite easily with Net::SSH or Expect.pm if it wasn't for the fact that we don't allow Root logons at work. A user must ssh to the remote box as themselves first, then su.

The problem is there are a lot of boxes, and authentication is usually via SecurID (although sometimes it's password). That's where I need to go back to the user and get their password or passcode.

I realise it would be a lot easier if I pulled the install to the box instead of pushing it out, but for convenience, I'd just like to come up with a way to push out the deployment so the apache config, cvs commit and deployment could all be done from one place.

Thanks,

js1.