Restarting a Windows service from a Linux box
We have a crummy legacy Windows application (already discussed [here][1]) which replicates content to from a Windows host to many Linux hosts. We several instances of it running on several boxes. Each instance has its own `.ini` file containing a list destination servers. Fairly often we need to change the content of these files and restart the process, a process which is done by hand by our ops team. I'd like to replace this with a simple web-based utility (running on a Linux host) which allows users to generate the configuration files, send them to the hosts and restart the services. Generating the files is easy -- I'd probably use Perl and Template Toolkit -- and since the servers export their configuration directories copying the data is relatively easy as well.

What're my options for restarting the Windows services? `Win32::Service`? I haven't had a chance to look very far yet so if you say "`x::y` makes this easy, but watch out for z" you'd save me a lot of time. Is it even possible? Alternatively, perhaps you could suggest a better way to tackle this problem (replacing the software sadly is not one!) I'm not trying to be lazy, just avoid wasting time fiddling with modules that might not do what I want.

  [1]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1045183/can-this-checksum-algorithm-be-improved
Restarting a Windows service from a Linux box
===

We have a crummy legacy Windows application (already discussed [here][1]) which replicates content to from a Windows host to many Linux hosts. We several instances of it running on several boxes. Each instance has its own `.ini` file containing a list destination servers. Fairly often we need to change the content of these files and restart the process, a process which is done by hand by our ops team. I'd like to replace this with a simple web-based utility (running on a Linux host) which allows users to generate the configuration files, send them to the hosts and restart the services. Generating the files is easy -- I'd probably use Perl and Template Toolkit -- and since the servers export their configuration directories copying the data is relatively easy as well.

What're my options for restarting the Windows services? `Win32::Service`? I haven't had a chance to look very far yet so if you say "`x::y` makes this easy, but watch out for z" you'd save me a lot of time. Is it even possible? Alternatively, perhaps you could suggest a better way to tackle this problem (replacing the software sadly is not one!) I'm not trying to be lazy, just avoid wasting time fiddling with modules that might not do what I want.

  [1]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1045183/can-this-checksum-algorithm-be-improved