You can run the scripts remotely detached, for example using GNU screen or simply by running them as nohup:

nohup myscript.pl 2>&1 >myscript.log &
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I think you can even do that inline using ssh:

ssh somehost 'nohup myscript.pl 2>&1 >myscript.log &'
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The problem I'm having is that the SSH sessions really chug up my machine

Post your code and we will be able to tell you how to improve it or show better alternatives.

So, is there another way to execute those scripts remotely without using SSH so I can continue using my laptop as normal and just periodically check the remote db to see what data has been collected?

If you're using Net::OpenSSH you get the same functionality using ubuntu's implementation of SSH, which makes things a lot faster.

But, again, you should post your code, as always here at PerlMonks.

Thanks everyone for the replies.

A quick update:

I was indeed doing something wrong. I was printing out error and status messages for each step in my parsing loops. For a big scrape job like the one I'm in the midst of, this could be hundreds of thousands of lines which was causing Terminal to chew up RAM.

So, I've commented out all but a couple critical lines and immediate symptom solved.

However, I think the nohup suggestion will actually solve the problem. Not having to keep a terminal window and SSH session open after executing a script sounds like a dream!

Thanks again!

I'm glad that you found a solution. I had been working on this before you made your post. I thought that I'd post it just in case it gives you some ideas.

I used Parallel::Runner to run 5 scrapers

#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;
use Parallel::Runner;

open STDOUT, '>', 'ssh.log'
        or die "Couldn't open ssh.log: $!\n";

my $runner = Parallel::Runner->new(5);
$runner->run( sub { system("perl scraper1.pl") });
$runner->run( sub { system("perl scraper2.pl") });
$runner->run( sub { system("perl scraper3.pl") });
$runner->run( sub { system("perl scraper4.pl") });
$runner->run( sub { system("perl scraper5.pl") });
$runner->finish;
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Then I used this to check the log

#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;
use Net::SSH::Perl;

connectToServer();

sub connectToServer {

    my $host     = 'remote_server';
    my $username = 'user';
    my $password = 'password';
    my $cmd      = 'cat /path/to/ssh.log';

    my $ssh = Net::SSH::Perl->new(
        $host,
        protocol => '2,1',
        debug    => 1,
    );
    $ssh->login( $username, $password );
    
    my ( $stdout, $stderr, $exit ) = $ssh->cmd($cmd);
    print $stdout, "\n";
}
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