Let me make this clear this script below is working fine. the only thing is instead of getting dir and hostnames from the script itself i need to read from text file. testfile
mshostname1
"/etc/init.d/"
"/var/logs/"
mshostname2"
"/whatever/"
"/more/"
This is the working script

#!/usr/bin/perl


my $server = 'nfserver';
my $scp    = '/usr/bin/scp';
my $time   = localtime;


my @mshost1 = (
        "msname1",
        "/local/home/gloob",
        "/var/spool/cron/crontabs",
        "/local/home/admin/service.etc"
);
my @mshost2 = (
        "msname2",
        "/local/p0/home/gob",
        "/var/spool/cron/crontabs",
        "/local/p0/home/admin/service.etc"
);

sub backup {
my $client = shift;
if ($client eq $client) {
print "About to tar and scp the following folders: @dir\n\n";
system("ssh", $client, "tar -cvvf  $client\.tar.gz @dir");
print("===============================\n");
system("ssh", $client, "scp $client\.tar.gz root\@$server:/export/prod
+ucts/backup/");
} else {
print "could not backup $client\n";
        }
}

sub get_dir_msd {
$client = shift(@mshost1);
@dir = @mshost1;
print "@dir\n";
print "$client\n";
backup($client);
}

sub get_dir_msd2 {
$client = shift(@mshost2);
@dir = @mshost2;
print "@dir\n";
print "$client\n";
backup($client);
}


get_dir_msd("mshost2");
get_dir_msd2("mshost1");
[download]