PHP - 2 machines

Hi, Q: Is it possible for me to use PHP to execute a function with arguments on another machine on my LAN *without* a web server ( using Linux ) ? Perhaps I would need to use sockets and the CLI to achieve this. Currently I'm using Perl SOAP daemons. Why would I want to do this ? Well I have several machine's with sole tasks. For example 1 mail server, 1 DNS server, 1 FTP server, 1 SAMBA server, 1 database server and 1 web/PHP server. I'd like to have the PHP scripting language on each box so that the machine's can 'talk' to each other and pass configuration details like useradd/userdel etc. In order to make config changes the executing script needs permission's greater than Nobody ( web server user is Nobody ). If I could do that using PHP that would be impressive. Thanks Regards Rudi.