remote execution

[Pete Shinners]

i pair of related questions here.

i'm interested in finding a way to run remote commands
on different IRIX/Linux machines on our LAN. Usually
i will be running commands that run between 5 minutes
to several hours. (ie, not quick little routines)

of importance to me are the ability to monitor the
remote stderr/stdout as well as the ability to terminate
the remote process. oh, and getting the return exit code
will be needed.

there are two methods i can think of. the first one is
simply piping an "rsh" command reading the output. i
should be able to get the output and exit status from
the pipe, but i'm curious if i can send the terminate
process easily this way.
the other method would be 'cool!' but i'm not sure how
possible it is. it would simply be to run python code
on the remote machine.

now i need to be able to do this between a lot of
different machines, so something with minimal/no
installation of every machine is somewhat important.

it seems like i could make do using the "RSH" and other
unix style tools, but i wanted to make sure i wasn't
missing something great before i get into this.

actually the ability to run remote python code would
not be that beneficial, since 99.9% of the time it would
simply be something like os.system(command)

thanks!