[MacPerl] How to make a remote Digest?

["J.O'Dell" <labrat@mailbag.com>]

I am using an old 68K Mac in my lab to store research data files.  It is in
a somewhat secure location, but (being paranoid) I want to make sure that
no one has tampered with it (ie to change the users and groups data file or
to store pirated MP3's !).  I reasoned that I could make MD5 digests of
critical files and compare to previous digests.  The machine is reachable
via FTP or HTTP (over a dialup connection through my ISP), so in my
naivete, I ran the script below using open() to open a test HTML page, and,
not surprisingly, it failed.  Several questions I hope someone can help me
with (reference to pod, if available, and please pardon my ignorance):

-how to digest a remote file without first downloading to my local drive
(my dialup connection is 28.8K, noisy rural phone lines)

-can open() be used on remote files via URL or IP address, or only on
Appleshare volumes (any restrictions due to network topology(zones, ??)?)

-if not open() what are best ways to access remote files via MacPerl (I am
pretty sure Java can treat remote URL's like it treats local files, but
prefer to work in Perl)

-glaring security issues??  Like, if I set it up so I can access the system
folder via FTP, am I creating massive vulnerability to outside attack?  I
am a real novice at system security, and want to do the "right thing" first
time out.

I appreciate your guidance...

Jane

#!usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;
use LWP::Simple;
use URI::URL;

use Digest::MD5  qw(md5_hex);

my ($my_server, $digest);
$my_server = new URI::URL 'http://chew80.che.wisc.edu/index.html';

#I check if the page exists by checking for the head of the html page
  if (head($my_server)) {
     print "$my_server has responded....\n";
  }

#here I want to open the remote file
open(FILE, $my_server) or die "Can't open '$my_server': $!";
binmode(FILE);

$digest = md5_hex(*FILE);
print "filetest digest is $digest\n";

__END__
And the output:
http://chew80.che.wisc.edu/index.html has responded....
# Can't open 'http://chew80.che.wisc.edu/index.html': Invalid argument.
File 'Dingo:my_scripts:2000:snippets:test_digest.pl'; Line 18

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