Hi Richard,
you can achieve this through a little CGI script.
In fact nothing else is done by webmin.
Webmin is a little http server with a bunch of CGI scripts entirely written in Perl.
If you are adventurous enough and are aware of the security implications you could for instance (in a trusted host environment between the boxes) allow a user to execute (non-perilious) commands on the remote box by putting him in the .shost file of the login account on the remote box.
I would recommend to use ssh instead of remsh.
Then you could write a small CGI script and place it in the ScriptAlias directory of the webserver, and make it executable by the webserver's UID.
In Perl one could write something like
$ruser = 'user_on_remote_box';
$rhost = 'fqn_of_remote_box';
print <
Context-type: text/html
remote ls -lR
HEADER
open SSH, "/usr/local/bin/ssh -l $ruser $rhost /usr/bin/ls -lR |";
while () { print }
close SSH;
print "\\n\\n";
__END__
But it is much better to use Perl's CGI.pm module, read the POD (i.e. "perldoc CGI").
Madness, thy name is system administration
