Some more details: code is running on rhel 5, all boxes i'm going to be connecting to will also be rhel (2.1 3 4 and 5). there are no firewall rules preventing ssh connections from the box this code runs to any of the other boxes.

also, just tried using ssh2->error() but it seems to be useless.

-----------------

#!/usr/bin/perl
use warnings;
use strict;
use Net::SSH2;
use Data::Dumper;

my $hostname = shift;
chomp($hostname);

my $ssh2 = Net::SSH2->new();
$ssh2->connect($hostname) or die "cant connect to $hostname\n";
$ssh2->auth_password('root','mypassword') or die "cant login to $hostn
+ame\n";

(my $code, my $error_name, my $error_string) = $ssh2->error();

if ($code)
{
        print "$code: $error_name: $error_string \n";
        exit();
}


my $chan = $ssh2->channel();
$chan->blocking(0);
$chan->shell();

print $chan "uname -a\n";
my @uname = <$chan>;
print @uname;

print $chan "who\n";
my @who = <$chan>;
print @who;

$chan->close;
[download]

[root@lpo-wiki-01 ~]# ./ssh.pl localhost
Linux lpo-wiki-01 2.6.18-53.el5 #1 SMP Wed Oct 10 16:34:02 EDT 2007 i6
+86 i686 i386 GNU/Linux
root     pts/0        2008-05-15 07:54 (val.vmsinfo.com)
root     pts/1        2008-05-15 12:11 (val.vmsinfo.com)
root     pts/2        2008-05-18 11:42 (10.41.0.213)
[root@lpo-wiki-01 ~]# ./ssh.pl yoda
cant connect to yoda
[root@lpo-wiki-01 ~]#
[download]