The current way we handle network file transfers is rather messy.
1. There is `vyatta-remote-copy.pl` (used exclusively for tech support file uploads), which is an ugly wrapper around `curl` and `ssh` for FTP and SCP transfers.
2. `vyatta-image-tools.pl` contains its own `curl` wrapper routines for some strange reason even though `vyatta-remote-copy.pl` is available.
3. There is also `remote.py` (used for config management), which is, again, wraps `curl`.
All of them spend a lot of effort fiddling with host keys.
The solution is writing a single all-Python script as the one-stop solution for all remote transfers in the codebase. Python standard library comes with `ftplib`, which is an adequate FTP client for our needs, although there is nothing for SSH. Paramiko is a well-known, reliable SSH library for Python, suited exactly for this purpose. It would save us from relying on `curl` and herding host keys.