Oops.. I'm a nuff nuff.. There's a plugin called check_by_ssh in the standard set of plugins (at least the source - check to see if your install of nagios has it compiled) $ ./check_by_ssh --help check_by_ssh v2002 (nagios-plugins 1.4.13) Copyright (c) 1999 Karl DeBisschop <<a href="mailto:kdebisschop@users.sourceforge.net">kdebisschop@users.sourceforge.net</a>> Copyright (c) 2000-2008 Nagios Plugin Development Team <<a href="mailto:nagiosplug-devel@lists.sourceforge.net">nagiosplug-devel@lists.sourceforge.net</a>> This plugin uses SSH to execute commands on a remote host Usage: check_by_ssh -H <host> -C <command> [-fqv] [-1|-2] [-4|-6] [-S [lines]] [-E [lines]] [-t timeout] [-i identity] [-l user] [-n name] [-s servicelist] [-O outputfile] [-p port] [-o ssh-option]