Comment 2 for bug 396058

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FrancisT (francis-turner) wrote : Re: Add support for the perl module Net::SSH:Perl

The packages Patrick found are alternatives (and IMO less usable alternatives) to Net::SSH::Perl

To quote from
http://search.cpan.org/~turnstep/Net-SSH-Perl-1.34/lib/Net/SSH/Perl.pm

One advantage to using Net::SSH::Perl over wrapper-style implementations of ssh clients is that it saves on process overhead: you no longer need to fork and execute a separate process in order to connect to an sshd. Depending on the amount of time and memory needed to fork a process, this win can be quite substantial; particularly if you're running in a persistent Perl environment (mod_perl, for example), where forking a new process is a drain on process and memory resources.

It also simplifies the process of using password-based authentications; when writing a wrapper around ssh you probably need to use Expect to control the ssh client and give it your password. Net::SSH::Perl has built-in support for the authentication protocols, so there's no longer any hassle of communicating with any external processes.