Prod you in the right direction? Now, this I can do (as I have no scripting skills whatsoever)
First of all, you may want to browse through O'Reilly's
Linux Command Directory - already, maybe that's a bit too long to
browse... better would be to eliminate the commands you need from
this quick reference and then look them up at the LCD.
You may also want to check Sourceforge.net or Google for some code - especially for the emailing bit. Coding that would take you quite a while...
For the programming bit, I suggest you learn bash. There is a great tutorial on TLDP called
Advanced Bash Scripting Guide which is very comprehensive and if you follow it you'll be programming in no time!
Assuming that the same shell is running on the machines, the commands will be exactly the same for all - so no need to code it differently for another machine.
Cheers,
-jk