You need to use IPC::Open3 and the "-t" flag to openssh. You can then get file handles to a ssh session and you can read and write from perl as if you were a human typing on the keyboard on the local console to and from ssh and to and from the remote shell. The biggest nightmare will be deadlocking since there is no way to do non-blocking or "peek()" or timeout reads on the handles to SSH. Do any monks have a solution to deadlocking on Open3 handles?