I work on windows and that won't be changing anytime soon. one thing I have a small problem with though: occasionally I want to run some tasks on my linux servers remotely based on detecting certain events of my windows box (which is automated and I can handle that). basically I'm wondering if there's any way to script SSH usage so I could set up what I want it to do previously and when it's run it'll go and do it. right now I have to open putty, connect, login, then do the commands but I'd like to be able to just have something run that could do all of that without any user input. is that possible? is it possible to setup a php script that when called will execute commands via root? (I'd require passwords and only let it work if it's my ip, etc)
my suggestion is to also log the events on your linux box , e.g. text file/file then create a cron that will read the event every 5min or 15 minute, then execute the specific commands for the recorded event some kind of an looped if-else script if it had a multiple entry, then email you the events and execution status, lastly clear the file on execution exit. in case there are events that are haven't been executed you can counter check it on your events on windows.. Hope it helps
In PHP, there's the 'exec' function, which will execute command line operations contained in a string (http://uk2.php.net/function.exec). I used it recently to get pgp encrypted emails sent between a server and a clients email account. Just watch out for permissions, they can be a beatch to sort out.