1 \versionid $Id: using.but,v 1.12 2003/01/23 12:30:26 jacob Exp $
5 This chapter provides a general introduction to some more advanced
6 features of PuTTY. For extreme detail and reference purposes,
7 \k{config} is likely to contain more information.
9 \H{using-session} During your session
11 A lot of PuTTY's complexity and features are in the configuration
12 panel. Once you have worked your way through that and started
13 a session, things should be reasonably simple after that.
14 Nevertheless, there are a few more useful features available.
16 \S{using-selection} Copying and pasting text
18 Often in a PuTTY session you will find text on your terminal screen
19 which you want to type in again. Like most other terminal emulators,
20 PuTTY allows you to copy and paste the text rather than having to
21 type it again. Also, copy and paste uses the Windows clipboard, so
22 that you can paste (for example) URLs into a web browser, or paste
23 from a word processor or spreadsheet into your terminal session.
25 PuTTY's copy and paste works entirely with the mouse. In order to
26 copy text to the clipboard, you just click the left mouse button in
27 the terminal window, and drag to select text. When you let go of the
28 button, the text is \e{automatically} copied to the clipboard. You
29 do not need to press Ctrl-C or Ctrl-Ins; in fact, if you do press
30 Ctrl-C, PuTTY will send a Ctrl-C character down your session to the
31 server where it will probably cause a process to be interrupted.
33 Pasting is done using the right button (or the middle mouse button,
34 if you have a three-button mouse and have set it up; see
35 \k{config-mouse}). Pressing Shift-Ins has the same effect.
36 When you click the right mouse button, PuTTY will
37 read whatever is in the Windows Clipboard and paste it into your
38 session, \e{exactly} as if it had been typed at the keyboard.
39 (Therefore, be careful of pasting formatted text into an editor that
40 does automatic indenting; you may find that the spaces pasted from
41 the clipboard plus the spaces added by the editor add up to too many
42 spaces and ruin the formatting. There is nothing PuTTY can do about
45 If you double-click the left mouse button, PuTTY will select a whole
46 word. If you double-click, hold down the second click, and drag the
47 mouse, PuTTY will select a sequence of whole words. (You can adjust
48 precisely what PuTTY considers to be part of a word; see
49 \k{config-charclasses}.) If you \e{triple}-click, or triple-click
50 and drag, then PuTTY will select a whole line or sequence of lines.
52 If you want to select a rectangular region instead of selecting to
53 the end of each line, you can do this by holding down Alt when you
54 make your selection. (You can also configure rectangular selection
55 to be the default, and then holding down Alt gives the normal
56 behaviour instead. See \k{config-rectselect} for details.)
58 If you have a middle mouse button, then you can use it to adjust an
59 existing selection if you selected something slightly wrong. (If you
60 have configured the middle mouse button to paste, then the right
61 mouse button does this instead.) Click the button on the screen, and
62 you can pick up the nearest end of the selection and drag it to
65 \S{using-scrollback} Scrolling the screen back
67 PuTTY keeps track of text that has scrolled up off the top of the
68 terminal. So if something appears on the screen that you want to
69 read, but it scrolls too fast and it's gone by the time you try to
70 look for it, you can use the scrollbar on the right side of the
71 window to look back up the session history and find it again.
73 As well as using the scrollbar, you can also page the scrollback up
74 and down by pressing Shift-PgUp and Shift-PgDn. You can scroll a
75 line at a time using Ctrl-PgUp and Ctrl-PgDn. These are still
76 available if you configure the scrollbar to be invisible.
78 By default the last 200 lines scrolled off the top are
79 preserved for you to look at. You can increase (or decrease) this
80 value using the configuration box; see \k{config-scrollback}.
82 \S{using-sysmenu} The System menu
84 If you click the left mouse button on the icon in the top left
85 corner of PuTTY's window, or click the right mouse button on the
86 title bar, you will see the standard Windows system menu containing
87 items like Minimise, Move, Size and Close.
89 PuTTY's system menu contains extra program features in addition to
90 the Windows standard options. These extra menu commands are
93 \S2{using-eventlog} The PuTTY Event Log
95 If you choose \q{Event Log} from the system menu, a small window
96 will pop up in which PuTTY logs significant events during the
97 connection. Most of the events in the log will probably take place
98 during session startup, but a few can occur at any point in the
99 session, and one or two occur right at the end.
101 You can use the mouse to select one or more lines of the Event Log,
102 and hit the Copy button to copy them to the clipboard. If you are
103 reporting a bug, it's often useful to paste the contents of the
104 Event Log into your bug report.
106 \S2{using-newsession} Starting new sessions
108 PuTTY's system menu provides some shortcut ways to start new
111 \b Selecting \q{New Session} will start a completely new instance of
112 PuTTY, and bring up the configuration box as normal.
114 \b Selecting \q{Duplicate Session} will start a session with
115 precisely the same options as your current one - connecting to the
116 same host using the same protocol, with all the same terminal
117 settings and everything.
119 \b The \q{Saved Sessions} submenu gives you quick access to any
120 sets of stored session details you have previously saved. See
121 \k{config-saving} for details of how to create saved sessions.
123 \S2{using-changesettings} Changing your session settings
125 If you select \q{Change Settings} from the system menu, PuTTY will
126 display a cut-down version of its initial configuration box. This
127 allows you to adjust most properties of your current session. You
128 can change the terminal size, the font, the actions of various
129 keypresses, the colours, and so on.
131 Some of the options that are available in the main configuration box
132 are not shown in the cut-down Change Settings box. These are usually
133 options which don't make sense to change in the middle of a session
134 (for example, you can't switch from SSH to Telnet in mid-session).
136 \S2{using-copyall} Copy All to Clipboard
138 This system menu option provides a convenient way to copy the whole
139 contents of the terminal screen and scrollback to the clipboard in
142 \S2{reset-terminal} Clearing and resetting the terminal
144 The \q{Clear Scrollback} option on the system menu tells PuTTY to
145 discard all the lines of text that have been kept after they
146 scrolled off the top of the screen. This might be useful, for
147 example, if you displayed sensitive information and wanted to make
148 sure nobody could look over your shoulder and see it. (Note that
149 this only prevents a casual user from using the scrollbar to view
150 the information; the text is not guaranteed not to still be in
153 The \q{Reset Terminal} option causes a full reset of the terminal
154 emulation. A VT-series terminal is a complex piece of software and
155 can easily get into a state where all the text printed becomes
156 unreadable. (This can happen, for example, if you accidentally
157 output a binary file to your terminal.) If this happens, selecting
158 Reset Terminal should sort it out.
160 \S2{using-fullscreen} Full screen mode
162 If you find the title bar on a maximised window to be ugly or
163 distracting, you can select Full Screen mode to maximise PuTTY
164 \q{even more}. When you select this, PuTTY will expand to fill the
165 whole screen and its borders, title bar and scrollbar will
166 disappear. (You can configure the scrollbar not to disappear in
167 full-screen mode if you want to keep it; see \k{config-scrollback}.)
169 When you are in full-screen mode, you can still access the system
170 menu if you click the left mouse button in the \e{extreme} top left
171 corner of the screen.
173 \H{using-logging} Creating a log file of your session
175 For some purposes you may find you want to log everything that
176 appears on your screen. You can do this using the \q{Logging} panel
177 in the configuration box.
179 To begin a session log, select \q{Change Settings} from the system
180 menu and go to the Logging panel. Enter a log file name, and select
181 a logging mode. (You can log all session output including the
182 terminal control sequences, or you can just log the printable text.
183 It depends what you want the log for.) Click \q{Apply} and your log
184 will be started. Later on, you can go back to the Logging panel and
185 select \q{Logging turned off completely} to stop logging; then PuTTY
186 will close the log file and you can safely read it.
188 See \k{config-logging} for more details and options.
190 \H{using-translation} Altering your character set configuration
192 If you find that special characters (accented characters, for
193 example) are not being displayed correctly in your PuTTY session, it
194 may be that PuTTY is interpreting the characters sent by the server
195 according to the wrong \e{character set}. There are a lot of
196 different character sets available, so it's entirely possible for
199 If you click \q{Change Settings} and look at the \q{Translation}
200 panel, you should see a large number of character sets which you can
201 select. Now all you need is to find out which of them you want!
203 \H{using-x-forwarding} Using X11 forwarding in SSH
205 The SSH protocol has the ability to securely forward X Window System
206 applications over your encrypted SSH connection, so that you can run
207 an application on the SSH server machine and have it put its windows
208 up on your local machine without sending any X network traffic in
211 In order to use this feature, you will need an X display server for
212 your Windows machine, such as X-Win32 or Exceed. This will probably
213 install itself as display number 0 on your local machine; if it
214 doesn't, the manual for the X server should tell you what it does
217 You should then tick the \q{Enable X11 forwarding} box in the
218 Tunnels panel (see \k{config-ssh-x11}) before starting your SSH
219 session. The \q{X display location} box reads \c{localhost:0} by
220 default, which is the usual display location where your X server
221 will be installed. If that needs changing, then change it.
223 Now you should be able to log in to the SSH server as normal. To
224 check that X forwarding has been successfully negotiated during
225 connection startup, you can check the PuTTY Event Log (see
226 \k{using-eventlog}). It should say something like this:
228 \c 2001-12-05 17:22:01 Requesting X11 forwarding
229 \c 2001-12-05 17:22:02 X11 forwarding enabled
231 If the remote system is Unix or Unix-like, you should also be able
232 to see that the \c{DISPLAY} environment variable has been set to
233 point at display 10 or above on the SSH server machine itself:
235 \c fred@unixbox:~$ echo $DISPLAY
238 If this works, you should then be able to run X applications in the
239 remote session and have them display their windows on your PC.
241 Note that if your PC X server requires authentication to connect,
242 then PuTTY cannot currently support it. If this is a problem for
243 you, you should mail the authors \#{FIXME} and give details.
245 \H{using-port-forwarding} Using port forwarding in SSH
247 The SSH protocol has the ability to forward arbitrary network
248 connections over your encrypted SSH connection, to avoid the network
249 traffic being sent in clear. For example, you could use this to
250 connect from your home computer to a POP-3 server on a remote
251 machine without your POP-3 password being visible to network
254 In order to use port forwarding to connect from your local machine
255 to a port on a remote server, you need to:
257 \b Choose a port number on your local machine where PuTTY should
258 listen for incoming connections. There are likely to be plenty of
259 unused port numbers above 3000. (You can also use a local loopback
260 address here; see \k{config-ssh-portfwd} for more details.)
262 \b Now, before you start your SSH connection, go to the Tunnels
263 panel (see \k{config-ssh-portfwd}). Make sure the \q{Local} radio
264 button is set. Enter the local port number into the \q{Source port}
265 box. Enter the destination host name and port number into the
266 \q{Destination} box, separated by a colon (for example,
267 \c{popserver.example.com:110} to connect to a POP-3 server).
269 \b Now click the \q{Add} button. The details of your port forwarding
270 should appear in the list box.
272 Now start your session and log in. (Port forwarding will not be
273 enabled until after you have logged in; otherwise it would be easy
274 to perform completely anonymous network attacks, and gain access to
275 anyone's virtual private network). To check that PuTTY has set up
276 the port forwarding correctly, you can look at the PuTTY Event Log
277 (see \k{using-eventlog}). It should say something like this:
279 \c 2001-12-05 17:22:10 Local port 3110 forwarding to
280 \c popserver.example.com:110
282 Now if you connect to the source port number on your local PC, you
283 should find that it answers you exactly as if it were the service
284 running on the destination machine. So in this example, you could
285 then configure an e-mail client to use \c{localhost:3110} as a POP-3
286 server instead of \c{popserver.example.com:110}. (Of course, the
287 forwarding will stop happening when your PuTTY session closes down.)
289 You can also forward ports in the other direction: arrange for a
290 particular port number on the \e{server} machine to be forwarded
291 back to your PC as a connection to a service on your PC or near it.
292 To do this, just select the \q{Remote} radio button instead of the
293 \q{Local} one. The \q{Source port} box will now specify a port
294 number on the \e{server} (note that most servers will not allow you
295 to use port numbers under 1024 for this purpose).
297 The source port for a forwarded connection usually does not accept
298 connections from any machine except the SSH client or server machine
299 itself (for local and remote forwardings respectively). There are
300 controls in the Tunnels panel to change this:
302 \b The \q{Local ports accept connections from other hosts} option
303 allows you to set up local-to-remote port forwardings in such a way
304 that machines other than your client PC can connect to the forwarded
307 \b The \q{Remote ports do the same} option does the same thing for
308 remote-to-local port forwardings (so that machines other than the
309 SSH server machine can connect to the forwarded port.) Note that
310 this feature is only available in the SSH 2 protocol, and not all
311 SSH 2 servers support it (OpenSSH 3.0 does not, for example).
313 \H{using-rawprot} Making raw TCP connections
315 A lot of Internet protocols are composed of commands and responses
316 in plain text. For example, SMTP (the protocol used to transfer
317 e-mail), NNTP (the protocol used to transfer Usenet news), and HTTP
318 (the protocol used to serve Web pages) all consist of commands in
321 Sometimes it can be useful to connect directly to one of these
322 services and speak the protocol \q{by hand}, by typing protocol
323 commands and watching the responses. On Unix machines, you can do
324 this using the system's \c{telnet} command to connect to the right
325 port number. For example, \c{telnet mailserver.example.com 25} might
326 enable you to talk directly to the SMTP service running on a mail
329 Although the Unix \c{telnet} program provides this functionality,
330 the protocol being used is not really Telnet. Really there is no
331 actual protocol at all; the bytes sent down the connection are
332 exactly the ones you type, and the bytes shown on the screen are
333 exactly the ones sent by the server. Unix \c{telnet} will attempt to
334 detect or guess whether the service it is talking to is a real
335 Telnet service or not; PuTTY prefers to be told for certain.
337 In order to make a debugging connection to a service of this type,
338 you simply select the fourth protocol name, \q{Raw}, from the
339 \q{Protocol} buttons in the \q{Session} configuration panel. (See
340 \k{config-hostname}.) You can then enter a host name and a port
341 number, and make the connection.
343 \H{using-cmdline} The PuTTY command line
345 PuTTY can be made to do various things without user intervention by
346 supplying command-line arguments (e.g., from a command prompt window,
347 or a Windows shortcut).
349 \S{using-cmdline-session} Starting a session from the command line
351 These options allow you to bypass the configuration window and launch
352 straight into a session.
354 To start a connection to a server called \c{host}:
356 \c putty.exe [-ssh | -telnet | -rlogin | -raw] [user@]host
358 If this syntax is used, settings are taken from the Default Settings
359 (see \k{config-saving}); \c{user} overrides these settings if
360 supplied. Also, you can specify a protocol, which will override the
361 default protocol (see \k{using-cmdline-protocol}).
363 For telnet sessions, the following alternative syntax is supported
364 (this makes PuTTY suitable for use as a URL handler for telnet URLs in
367 \c putty.exe telnet://host[:port]/
369 In order to start an existing saved session called \c{sessionname},
370 use the \c{-load} option (described in \k{using-cmdline-load}).
372 \c putty.exe -load "session name"
374 \S{using-cleanup} \c{-cleanup}
376 If invoked with the \c{-cleanup} option, rather than running as
377 normal, PuTTY will remove its registry entries and random seed file
378 from the local machine (after confirming with the user).
380 \S{using-general-opts} Standard command-line options
382 PuTTY and its associated tools support a range of command-line
383 options, most of which are consistent across all the tools. This
384 section lists the available options in all tools. Options which are
385 specific to a particular tool are covered in the chapter about that
388 \S2{using-cmdline-load} \c{-load}: load a saved session
390 The \c{-load} option causes PuTTY to load configuration details out
391 of a saved session. If these details include a host name, then this
392 option is all you need to make PuTTY start a session (although Plink
393 still requires an explicitly specified host name).
395 You need double quotes around the session name if it contains spaces.
397 If you want to create a Windows shortcut to start a PuTTY saved
398 session, this is the option you should use: your shortcut should
401 \c d:\path\to\putty.exe -load "my session"
403 (Note that PuTTY itself supports an alternative form of this option,
404 for backwards compatibility. If you execute \c{putty @sessionname}
405 it will have the same effect as \c{putty -load "sessionname"}. With
406 the \c{@} form, no double quotes are required, and the \c{@} sign
407 must be the very first thing on the command line. This form of the
408 option is deprecated.)
410 \S2{using-cmdline-protocol} Selecting a protocol: \c{-ssh},
411 \c{-telnet}, \c{-rlogin}, \c{-raw}
413 To choose which protocol you want to connect with, you can use one
416 \b \c{-ssh} selects the SSH protocol.
418 \b \c{-telnet} selects the Telnet protocol.
420 \b \c{-rlogin} selects the Rlogin protocol.
422 \b \c{-raw} selects the raw protocol.
424 These options are not available in the file transfer tools PSCP and
425 PSFTP (which only work with the SSH protocol).
427 These options are equivalent to the protocol selection buttons in
428 the Session panel of the PuTTY configuration box (see
429 \k{config-hostname}).
431 \S2{using-cmdline-v} \c{-v}: increase verbosity
433 Most of the PuTTY tools can be made to tell you more about what they
434 are doing by supplying the \c{-v} option. If you are having trouble
435 when making a connection, or you're simply curious, you can turn
436 this switch on and hope to find out more about what is happening.
438 \S2{using-cmdline-l} \c{-l}: specify a login name
440 You can specify the user name to log in as on the remote server
441 using the \c{-l} option. For example, \c{plink login.example.com -l
444 These options are equivalent to the username selection box in the
445 Connection panel of the PuTTY configuration box (see
446 \k{config-username}).
448 \S2{using-cmdline-portfwd} \c{-L} and \c{-R}: set up port forwardings
450 As well as setting up port forwardings in the PuTTY configuration
451 (see \k{config-ssh-portfwd}), you can also set up forwardings on the
452 command line. The command-line options work just like the ones in
453 Unix \c{ssh} programs.
455 To forward a local port (say 5110) to a remote destination (say
456 \cw{popserver.example.com} port 110), you can write something like
459 \c putty -L 5110:popserver.example.com:110 -load mysession
460 \c plink mysession -L 5110:popserver.example.com:110
462 And to forward a remote port to a local destination, just use the
463 \c{-R} option instead of \c{-L}:
465 \c putty -R 5023:mytelnetserver.myhouse.org:23 -load mysession
466 \c plink mysession -R 5023:mytelnetserver.myhouse.org:23
468 For general information on port forwarding, see
469 \k{using-port-forwarding}.
471 These options are not available in the file transfer tools PSCP and
474 \S2{using-cmdline-m} \c{-m}: read a remote command or script from a
477 The \c{-m} option performs a similar function to the \q{Remote
478 command} box in the SSH panel of the PuTTY configuration box (see
479 \k{config-command}). However, the \c{-m} option expects to be given
480 a file name, and it will read a command from that file. On most Unix
481 systems, you can even put multiple lines in this file and execute
482 more than one command in sequence, or a whole shell script.
484 This option is not available in the file transfer tools PSCP and
487 \S2{using-cmdline-p} \c{-P}: specify a port number
489 The \c{-P} option is used to specify the port number to connect to. If
490 you have a Telnet server running on port 9696 of a machine instead of
491 port 23, for example:
493 \c putty -telnet -P 9696 host.name
494 \c plink -telnet -P 9696 host.name
496 (Note that this option is more useful in Plink than in PuTTY,
497 because in PuTTY you can write \c{putty -telnet host.name 9696} in
500 These options are equivalent to the protocol selection buttons in
501 the Session panel of the PuTTY configuration box (see
502 \k{config-hostname}).
504 \S2{using-cmdline-pw} \c{-pw}: specify a password
506 A simple way to automate a remote login is to supply your password
507 on the command line. This is \e{not recommended} for reasons of
508 security. If you possibly can, we recommend you set up public-key
509 authentication instead. See \k{pubkey} for details.
511 Note that the \c{-pw} option only works when you are using the SSH
512 protocol. Due to fundamental limitations of Telnet and Rlogin, these
513 protocols do not support automated password authentication.
515 \S2{using-cmdline-agent} \c{-A} and \c{-a}: control agent forwarding
517 The \c{-A} option turns on SSH agent forwarding, and \c{-a} turns it
518 off. These options are only meaningful if you are using SSH.
520 See \k{pageant} for general information on Pageant, and
521 \k{pageant-forward} for information on agent forwarding. Note that
522 there is a security risk involved with enabling this option; see
523 \k{pageant-security} for details.
525 These options are equivalent to the agent forwarding checkbox in the
526 Auth panel of the PuTTY configuration box (see \k{config-ssh-agentfwd}).
528 These options are not available in the file transfer tools PSCP and
531 \S2{using-cmdline-x11} \c{-X} and \c{-x}: control X11 forwarding
533 The \c{-X} option turns on X11 forwarding in SSH, and \c{-x} turns
534 it off. These options are only meaningful if you are using SSH.
536 For information on X11 forwarding, see \k{using-x-forwarding}.
538 These options are equivalent to the X11 forwarding checkbox in the
539 Tunnels panel of the PuTTY configuration box (see
542 These options are not available in the file transfer tools PSCP and
545 \S2{using-cmdline-pty} \c{-t} and \c{-T}: control pseudo-terminal
548 The \c{-t} option ensures PuTTY attempts to allocate a
549 pseudo-terminal at the server, and \c{-T} stops it from allocating
550 one. These options are only meaningful if you are using SSH.
552 These options are equivalent to the \q{Don't allocate a
553 pseudo-terminal} checkbox in the SSH panel of the PuTTY
554 configuration box (see \k{config-ssh-pty}).
556 These options are not available in the file transfer tools PSCP and
559 \S2{using-cmdline-compress} \c{-C}: enable compression
561 The \c{-C} option enables compression of the data sent across the
562 network. This option is only meaningful if you are using SSH.
564 This option is equivalent to the \q{Enable compression} checkbox in
565 the SSH panel of the PuTTY configuration box (see
566 \k{config-ssh-comp}).
568 \S2{using-cmdline-sshprot} \c{-1} and \c{-2}: specify an SSH protocol
571 The \c{-1} and \c{-2} options force PuTTY to use version 1 or
572 version 2 of the SSH protocol. These options are only meaningful if
575 These options are equivalent to selecting your preferred SSH
576 protocol version as \q{1 only} or \q{2 only} in the SSH panel of the
577 PuTTY configuration box (see \k{config-ssh-prot}).
579 \S2{using-cmdline-identity} \c{-i}: specify an SSH private key
581 The \c{-i} option allows you to specify the name of a private key
582 file in \c{*.PPK} format which PuTTY will use to authenticate with the
583 server. This option is only meaningful if you are using SSH.
585 For general information on public-key authentication, see \k{pubkey}.
587 This option is equivalent to the \q{Private key file for
588 authentication} box in the Auth panel of the PuTTY configuration box
589 (see \k{config-ssh-privkey}).