concept to execute small jobs on a remote machine

From: Ekkard Gerlach (egerlach_at_aiai.de)
Date: 02/17/04 

Date: Tue, 17 Feb 2004 14:34:21 +0000 (UTC)

In a SOHO-area (small office, 1 server, about 4 linux clients)
I need a concept to execute small jobs on remote machines,
mostly the server. The jobs are like purging printer
queues (CUPS, LPD), changing some configuration file of a
commercial program, manipulating some text in mails of user
accounts of the mail server, etc. The jobs have to be
executed automatically, there's no manual login possible.

Can you propose some concepts? Some pointers to search
with google may be enough.

My concept so far:
==================
This is my concept realised successfully two times so far:
Install user "dummy" and group "dummy" on any server and
any client. The normal users may ssh to user dummy of
other PC's (ssh-keys are exchanged, no passphrase) and
user dummy is allowed to execute some skripts defined in
/etc/sudoers. The ssh connection just executes these
jobs. Thats all. It's working! But are there some better
concepts?

thx
Ekkard