I know the root login/password for a machines, and I want to automate some commands like this from each:

ssh root@remoteHost1 "tail /var/log/messages"
ssh root@remoteHost2 "tail /var/log/messages"
ssh root@remoteHost3 "tail /var/log/messages"
ssh root@remoteHost4 "tail /var/log/messages"
ssh root@remoteHost5 "tail /var/log/messages"

1. Get your public key into the image.

* OR *

2. Get the people who do the re-imaging to re-install your key when they re-image.

* OR *

3. ssh to your own machine taking an input file but use the option to allocate a pseudo-terminal, then in that ssh shell do the ssh to the actual target.

Basically to get the password entered you should have a terminal allocated.

Thanks for the reply

I think I found a CPAN module that will allow me to use both a username and password

Net::SSH

Seems like it is a fully loaded SSH session within Perl, so will do what I need it to.