Steven Shockley points out that the .PPK extension is far from obvious to

[u/mdw/putty] / doc / using.but

\versionid $Id: using.but,v 1.11 2003/01/16 15:43:18 jacob Exp $

\C{using} Using PuTTY

This chapter provides a general introduction to some more advanced
features of PuTTY. For extreme detail and reference purposes,
\k{config} is likely to contain more information.

\H{using-session} During your session

A lot of PuTTY's complexity and features are in the configuration
panel. Once you have worked your way through that and started
a session, things should be reasonably simple after that.
Nevertheless, there are a few more useful features available.

\S{using-selection} Copying and pasting text

Often in a PuTTY session you will find text on your terminal screen
which you want to type in again. Like most other terminal emulators,
PuTTY allows you to copy and paste the text rather than having to
type it again. Also, copy and paste uses the Windows clipboard, so
that you can paste (for example) URLs into a web browser, or paste
from a word processor or spreadsheet into your terminal session.

PuTTY's copy and paste works entirely with the mouse. In order to
copy text to the clipboard, you just click the left mouse button in
the terminal window, and drag to select text. When you let go of the
button, the text is \e{automatically} copied to the clipboard. You
do not need to press Ctrl-C or Ctrl-Ins; in fact, if you do press
Ctrl-C, PuTTY will send a Ctrl-C character down your session to the
server where it will probably cause a process to be interrupted.

Pasting is done using the right button (or the middle mouse button,
if you have a three-button mouse and have set it up; see
\k{config-mouse}). Pressing Shift-Ins has the same effect.
When you click the right mouse button, PuTTY will
read whatever is in the Windows Clipboard and paste it into your
session, \e{exactly} as if it had been typed at the keyboard.
(Therefore, be careful of pasting formatted text into an editor that
does automatic indenting; you may find that the spaces pasted from
the clipboard plus the spaces added by the editor add up to too many
spaces and ruin the formatting. There is nothing PuTTY can do about
this.)

If you double-click the left mouse button, PuTTY will select a whole
word. If you double-click, hold down the second click, and drag the
mouse, PuTTY will select a sequence of whole words. (You can adjust
precisely what PuTTY considers to be part of a word; see
\k{config-charclasses}.) If you \e{triple}-click, or triple-click
and drag, then PuTTY will select a whole line or sequence of lines.

If you want to select a rectangular region instead of selecting to
the end of each line, you can do this by holding down Alt when you
make your selection. (You can also configure rectangular selection
to be the default, and then holding down Alt gives the normal
behaviour instead. See \k{config-rectselect} for details.)

If you have a middle mouse button, then you can use it to adjust an
existing selection if you selected something slightly wrong. (If you
have configured the middle mouse button to paste, then the right
mouse button does this instead.) Click the button on the screen, and
you can pick up the nearest end of the selection and drag it to
somewhere else.

\S{using-scrollback} Scrolling the screen back

PuTTY keeps track of text that has scrolled up off the top of the
terminal. So if something appears on the screen that you want to
read, but it scrolls too fast and it's gone by the time you try to
look for it, you can use the scrollbar on the right side of the
window to look back up the session history and find it again.

As well as using the scrollbar, you can also page the scrollback up
and down by pressing Shift-PgUp and Shift-PgDn. These are still
available if you configure the scrollbar to be invisible.

By default the last 200 lines scrolled off the top are
preserved for you to look at. You can increase (or decrease) this
value using the configuration box; see \k{config-scrollback}.

\S{using-sysmenu} The System menu

If you click the left mouse button on the icon in the top left
corner of PuTTY's window, or click the right mouse button on the
title bar, you will see the standard Windows system menu containing
items like Minimise, Move, Size and Close.

PuTTY's system menu contains extra program features in addition to
the Windows standard options. These extra menu commands are
described below.

\S2{using-eventlog} The PuTTY Event Log

If you choose \q{Event Log} from the system menu, a small window
will pop up in which PuTTY logs significant events during the
connection. Most of the events in the log will probably take place
during session startup, but a few can occur at any point in the
session, and one or two occur right at the end.

You can use the mouse to select one or more lines of the Event Log,
and hit the Copy button to copy them to the clipboard. If you are
reporting a bug, it's often useful to paste the contents of the
Event Log into your bug report.

\S2{using-newsession} Starting new sessions

PuTTY's system menu provides some shortcut ways to start new
sessions:

\b Selecting \q{New Session} will start a completely new instance of
PuTTY, and bring up the configuration box as normal.

\b Selecting \q{Duplicate Session} will start a session with
precisely the same options as your current one - connecting to the
same host using the same protocol, with all the same terminal
settings and everything.

\b The \q{Saved Sessions} submenu gives you quick access to any
sets of stored session details you have previously saved. See
\k{config-saving} for details of how to create saved sessions.

\S2{using-changesettings} Changing your session settings

If you select \q{Change Settings} from the system menu, PuTTY will
display a cut-down version of its initial configuration box. This
allows you to adjust most properties of your current session. You
can change the terminal size, the font, the actions of various
keypresses, the colours, and so on.

Some of the options that are available in the main configuration box
are not shown in the cut-down Change Settings box. These are usually
options which don't make sense to change in the middle of a session
(for example, you can't switch from SSH to Telnet in mid-session).

\S2{using-copyall} Copy All to Clipboard

This system menu option provides a convenient way to copy the whole
contents of the terminal screen and scrollback to the clipboard in
one go.

\S2{reset-terminal} Clearing and resetting the terminal

The \q{Clear Scrollback} option on the system menu tells PuTTY to
discard all the lines of text that have been kept after they
scrolled off the top of the screen. This might be useful, for
example, if you displayed sensitive information and wanted to make
sure nobody could look over your shoulder and see it. (Note that
this only prevents a casual user from using the scrollbar to view
the information; the text is not guaranteed not to still be in
PuTTY's memory.)

The \q{Reset Terminal} option causes a full reset of the terminal
emulation. A VT-series terminal is a complex piece of software and
can easily get into a state where all the text printed becomes
unreadable. (This can happen, for example, if you accidentally
output a binary file to your terminal.) If this happens, selecting
Reset Terminal should sort it out.

\S2{using-fullscreen} Full screen mode

If you find the title bar on a maximised window to be ugly or
distracting, you can select Full Screen mode to maximise PuTTY
\q{even more}. When you select this, PuTTY will expand to fill the
whole screen and its borders, title bar and scrollbar will
disappear. (You can configure the scrollbar not to disappear in
full-screen mode if you want to keep it; see \k{config-scrollback}.)

When you are in full-screen mode, you can still access the system
menu if you click the left mouse button in the \e{extreme} top left
corner of the screen.

\H{using-logging} Creating a log file of your session

For some purposes you may find you want to log everything that
appears on your screen. You can do this using the \q{Logging} panel
in the configuration box.

To begin a session log, select \q{Change Settings} from the system
menu and go to the Logging panel. Enter a log file name, and select
a logging mode. (You can log all session output including the
terminal control sequences, or you can just log the printable text.
It depends what you want the log for.) Click \q{Apply} and your log
will be started. Later on, you can go back to the Logging panel and
select \q{Logging turned off completely} to stop logging; then PuTTY
will close the log file and you can safely read it.

See \k{config-logging} for more details and options.

\H{using-translation} Altering your character set configuration

If you find that special characters (accented characters, for
example) are not being displayed correctly in your PuTTY session, it
may be that PuTTY is interpreting the characters sent by the server
according to the wrong \e{character set}. There are a lot of
different character sets available, so it's entirely possible for
this to happen.

If you click \q{Change Settings} and look at the \q{Translation}
panel, you should see a large number of character sets which you can
select. Now all you need is to find out which of them you want!

\H{using-x-forwarding} Using X11 forwarding in SSH

The SSH protocol has the ability to securely forward X Window System
applications over your encrypted SSH connection, so that you can run
an application on the SSH server machine and have it put its windows
up on your local machine without sending any X network traffic in
the clear.

In order to use this feature, you will need an X display server for
your Windows machine, such as X-Win32 or Exceed. This will probably
install itself as display number 0 on your local machine; if it
doesn't, the manual for the X server should tell you what it does
do.

You should then tick the \q{Enable X11 forwarding} box in the
Tunnels panel (see \k{config-ssh-x11}) before starting your SSH
session. The \q{X display location} box reads \c{localhost:0} by
default, which is the usual display location where your X server
will be installed. If that needs changing, then change it.

Now you should be able to log in to the SSH server as normal. To
check that X forwarding has been successfully negotiated during
connection startup, you can check the PuTTY Event Log (see
\k{using-eventlog}). It should say something like this:

\c 2001-12-05 17:22:01 Requesting X11 forwarding
\c 2001-12-05 17:22:02 X11 forwarding enabled

If the remote system is Unix or Unix-like, you should also be able
to see that the \c{DISPLAY} environment variable has been set to
point at display 10 or above on the SSH server machine itself:

\c fred@unixbox:~$ echo $DISPLAY
\c unixbox:10.0

If this works, you should then be able to run X applications in the
remote session and have them display their windows on your PC.

Note that if your PC X server requires authentication to connect,
then PuTTY cannot currently support it. If this is a problem for
you, you should mail the authors \#{FIXME} and give details.

\H{using-port-forwarding} Using port forwarding in SSH

The SSH protocol has the ability to forward arbitrary network
connections over your encrypted SSH connection, to avoid the network
traffic being sent in clear. For example, you could use this to
connect from your home computer to a POP-3 server on a remote
machine without your POP-3 password being visible to network
sniffers.

In order to use port forwarding to connect from your local machine
to a port on a remote server, you need to:

\b Choose a port number on your local machine where PuTTY should
listen for incoming connections. There are likely to be plenty of
unused port numbers above 3000. (You can also use a local loopback
address here; see \k{config-ssh-portfwd} for more details.)

\b Now, before you start your SSH connection, go to the Tunnels
panel (see \k{config-ssh-portfwd}). Make sure the \q{Local} radio
button is set. Enter the local port number into the \q{Source port}
box. Enter the destination host name and port number into the
\q{Destination} box, separated by a colon (for example,
\c{popserver.example.com:110} to connect to a POP-3 server).

\b Now click the \q{Add} button. The details of your port forwarding
should appear in the list box.

Now start your session and log in. (Port forwarding will not be
enabled until after you have logged in; otherwise it would be easy
to perform completely anonymous network attacks, and gain access to
anyone's virtual private network). To check that PuTTY has set up
the port forwarding correctly, you can look at the PuTTY Event Log
(see \k{using-eventlog}). It should say something like this:

\c 2001-12-05 17:22:10 Local port 3110 forwarding to
\c          popserver.example.com:110

Now if you connect to the source port number on your local PC, you
should find that it answers you exactly as if it were the service
running on the destination machine. So in this example, you could
then configure an e-mail client to use \c{localhost:3110} as a POP-3
server instead of \c{popserver.example.com:110}. (Of course, the
forwarding will stop happening when your PuTTY session closes down.)

You can also forward ports in the other direction: arrange for a
particular port number on the \e{server} machine to be forwarded
back to your PC as a connection to a service on your PC or near it.
To do this, just select the \q{Remote} radio button instead of the
\q{Local} one. The \q{Source port} box will now specify a port
number on the \e{server} (note that most servers will not allow you
to use port numbers under 1024 for this purpose).

The source port for a forwarded connection usually does not accept
connections from any machine except the SSH client or server machine
itself (for local and remote forwardings respectively). There are
controls in the Tunnels panel to change this:

\b The \q{Local ports accept connections from other hosts} option
allows you to set up local-to-remote port forwardings in such a way
that machines other than your client PC can connect to the forwarded
port.

\b The \q{Remote ports do the same} option does the same thing for
remote-to-local port forwardings (so that machines other than the
SSH server machine can connect to the forwarded port.) Note that
this feature is only available in the SSH 2 protocol, and not all
SSH 2 servers support it (OpenSSH 3.0 does not, for example).

\H{using-rawprot} Making raw TCP connections

A lot of Internet protocols are composed of commands and responses
in plain text. For example, SMTP (the protocol used to transfer
e-mail), NNTP (the protocol used to transfer Usenet news), and HTTP
(the protocol used to serve Web pages) all consist of commands in
readable plain text.

Sometimes it can be useful to connect directly to one of these
services and speak the protocol \q{by hand}, by typing protocol
commands and watching the responses. On Unix machines, you can do
this using the system's \c{telnet} command to connect to the right
port number. For example, \c{telnet mailserver.example.com 25} might
enable you to talk directly to the SMTP service running on a mail
server.

Although the Unix \c{telnet} program provides this functionality,
the protocol being used is not really Telnet. Really there is no
actual protocol at all; the bytes sent down the connection are
exactly the ones you type, and the bytes shown on the screen are
exactly the ones sent by the server. Unix \c{telnet} will attempt to
detect or guess whether the service it is talking to is a real
Telnet service or not; PuTTY prefers to be told for certain.

In order to make a debugging connection to a service of this type,
you simply select the fourth protocol name, \q{Raw}, from the
\q{Protocol} buttons in the \q{Session} configuration panel. (See
\k{config-hostname}.) You can then enter a host name and a port
number, and make the connection.

\H{using-cmdline} The PuTTY command line

PuTTY can be made to do various things without user intervention by
supplying command-line arguments (e.g., from a command prompt window,
or a Windows shortcut).

\S{using-cmdline-session} Starting a session from the command line

These options allow you to bypass the configuration window and launch
straight into a session.

To start a connection to a server called \c{host}:

\c putty.exe [-ssh | -telnet | -rlogin | -raw] [user@]host

If this syntax is used, settings are taken from the Default Settings
(see \k{config-saving}); \c{user} overrides these settings if
supplied. Also, you can specify a protocol, which will override the
default protocol (see \k{using-cmdline-protocol}).

For telnet sessions, the following alternative syntax is supported
(this makes PuTTY suitable for use as a URL handler for telnet URLs in
web browsers):

\c putty.exe telnet://host[:port]/

In order to start an existing saved session called \c{sessionname},
use the \c{-load} option (described in \k{using-cmdline-load}).

\c putty.exe -load "session name"

\S{using-cleanup} \c{-cleanup}

If invoked with the \c{-cleanup} option, rather than running as
normal, PuTTY will remove its registry entries and random seed file
from the local machine (after confirming with the user).

\S{using-general-opts} Standard command-line options

PuTTY and its associated tools support a range of command-line
options, most of which are consistent across all the tools. This
section lists the available options in all tools. Options which are
specific to a particular tool are covered in the chapter about that
tool.

\S2{using-cmdline-load} \c{-load}: load a saved session

The \c{-load} option causes PuTTY to load configuration details out
of a saved session. If these details include a host name, then this
option is all you need to make PuTTY start a session (although Plink
still requires an explicitly specified host name).

You need double quotes around the session name if it contains spaces.

If you want to create a Windows shortcut to start a PuTTY saved
session, this is the option you should use: your shortcut should
call something like

\c d:\path\to\putty.exe -load "my session"

(Note that PuTTY itself supports an alternative form of this option,
for backwards compatibility. If you execute \c{putty @sessionname}
it will have the same effect as \c{putty -load "sessionname"}. With
the \c{@} form, no double quotes are required, and the \c{@} sign
must be the very first thing on the command line. This form of the
option is deprecated.)

\S2{using-cmdline-protocol} Selecting a protocol: \c{-ssh},
\c{-telnet}, \c{-rlogin}, \c{-raw}

To choose which protocol you want to connect with, you can use one
of these options:

\b \c{-ssh} selects the SSH protocol.

\b \c{-telnet} selects the Telnet protocol.

\b \c{-rlogin} selects the Rlogin protocol.

\b \c{-raw} selects the raw protocol.

These options are not available in the file transfer tools PSCP and
PSFTP (which only work with the SSH protocol).

These options are equivalent to the protocol selection buttons in
the Session panel of the PuTTY configuration box (see
\k{config-hostname}).

\S2{using-cmdline-v} \c{-v}: increase verbosity

Most of the PuTTY tools can be made to tell you more about what they
are doing by supplying the \c{-v} option. If you are having trouble
when making a connection, or you're simply curious, you can turn
this switch on and hope to find out more about what is happening.

\S2{using-cmdline-l} \c{-l}: specify a login name

You can specify the user name to log in as on the remote server
using the \c{-l} option. For example, \c{plink login.example.com -l
fred}.

These options are equivalent to the username selection box in the
Connection panel of the PuTTY configuration box (see
\k{config-username}).

\S2{using-cmdline-portfwd} \c{-L} and \c{-R}: set up port forwardings

As well as setting up port forwardings in the PuTTY configuration
(see \k{config-ssh-portfwd}), you can also set up forwardings on the
command line. The command-line options work just like the ones in
Unix \c{ssh} programs.

To forward a local port (say 5110) to a remote destination (say
\cw{popserver.example.com} port 110), you can write something like
one of these:

\c putty -L 5110:popserver.example.com:110 -load mysession
\c plink mysession -L 5110:popserver.example.com:110

And to forward a remote port to a local destination, just use the
\c{-R} option instead of \c{-L}:

\c putty -R 5023:mytelnetserver.myhouse.org:23 -load mysession
\c plink mysession -R 5023:mytelnetserver.myhouse.org:23

For general information on port forwarding, see
\k{using-port-forwarding}.

These options are not available in the file transfer tools PSCP and
PSFTP.

\S2{using-cmdline-m} \c{-m}: read a remote command or script from a
file

The \c{-m} option performs a similar function to the \q{Remote
command} box in the SSH panel of the PuTTY configuration box (see
\k{config-command}). However, the \c{-m} option expects to be given
a file name, and it will read a command from that file. On most Unix
systems, you can even put multiple lines in this file and execute
more than one command in sequence, or a whole shell script.

This option is not available in the file transfer tools PSCP and
PSFTP.

\S2{using-cmdline-p} \c{-P}: specify a port number

The \c{-P} option is used to specify the port number to connect to. If
you have a Telnet server running on port 9696 of a machine instead of
port 23, for example:

\c putty -telnet -P 9696 host.name
\c plink -telnet -P 9696 host.name

(Note that this option is more useful in Plink than in PuTTY,
because in PuTTY you can write \c{putty -telnet host.name 9696} in
any case.)

These options are equivalent to the protocol selection buttons in
the Session panel of the PuTTY configuration box (see
\k{config-hostname}).

\S2{using-cmdline-pw} \c{-pw}: specify a password

A simple way to automate a remote login is to supply your password
on the command line. This is \e{not recommended} for reasons of
security. If you possibly can, we recommend you set up public-key
authentication instead. See \k{pubkey} for details.

Note that the \c{-pw} option only works when you are using the SSH
protocol. Due to fundamental limitations of Telnet and Rlogin, these
protocols do not support automated password authentication.

\S2{using-cmdline-agent} \c{-A} and \c{-a}: control agent forwarding

The \c{-A} option turns on SSH agent forwarding, and \c{-a} turns it
off. These options are only meaningful if you are using SSH.

See \k{pageant} for general information on Pageant, and
\k{pageant-forward} for information on agent forwarding. Note that
there is a security risk involved with enabling this option; see
\k{pageant-security} for details.

These options are equivalent to the agent forwarding checkbox in the
Auth panel of the PuTTY configuration box (see \k{config-ssh-agentfwd}).

These options are not available in the file transfer tools PSCP and
PSFTP.

\S2{using-cmdline-x11} \c{-X} and \c{-x}: control X11 forwarding

The \c{-X} option turns on X11 forwarding in SSH, and \c{-x} turns
it off. These options are only meaningful if you are using SSH.

For information on X11 forwarding, see \k{using-x-forwarding}.

These options are equivalent to the X11 forwarding checkbox in the
Tunnels panel of the PuTTY configuration box (see
\k{config-ssh-x11}).

These options are not available in the file transfer tools PSCP and
PSFTP.

\S2{using-cmdline-pty} \c{-t} and \c{-T}: control pseudo-terminal
allocation

The \c{-t} option ensures PuTTY attempts to allocate a
pseudo-terminal at the server, and \c{-T} stops it from allocating
one. These options are only meaningful if you are using SSH.

These options are equivalent to the \q{Don't allocate a
pseudo-terminal} checkbox in the SSH panel of the PuTTY
configuration box (see \k{config-ssh-pty}).

These options are not available in the file transfer tools PSCP and
PSFTP.

\S2{using-cmdline-compress} \c{-C}: enable compression

The \c{-C} option enables compression of the data sent across the
network. This option is only meaningful if you are using SSH.

This option is equivalent to the \q{Enable compression} checkbox in
the SSH panel of the PuTTY configuration box (see
\k{config-ssh-comp}).

\S2{using-cmdline-sshprot} \c{-1} and \c{-2}: specify an SSH protocol
version

The \c{-1} and \c{-2} options force PuTTY to use version 1 or
version 2 of the SSH protocol. These options are only meaningful if
you are using SSH.

These options are equivalent to selecting your preferred SSH
protocol version as \q{1 only} or \q{2 only} in the SSH panel of the
PuTTY configuration box (see \k{config-ssh-prot}).

\S2{using-cmdline-identity} \c{-i}: specify an SSH private key

The \c{-i} option allows you to specify the name of a private key
file in \c{*.PPK} format which PuTTY will use to authenticate with the
server. This option is only meaningful if you are using SSH.

For general information on public-key authentication, see \k{pubkey}.

This option is equivalent to the \q{Private key file for
authentication} box in the Auth panel of the PuTTY configuration box
(see \k{config-ssh-privkey}).