1 \versionid $Id: using.but,v 1.36 2004/10/19 13:54:50 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 \I{copy and paste}Often in a PuTTY session you will find text on
19 your terminal screen which you want to type in again. Like most
20 other terminal emulators, PuTTY allows you to copy and paste the
21 text rather than having to type it again. Also, copy and paste uses
22 the \I{Windows clipboard}Windows \i{clipboard}, so that you can
23 paste (for example) URLs into a web browser, or paste from a word
24 processor or spreadsheet into your terminal session.
26 PuTTY's copy and paste works entirely with the \i{mouse}. In order
27 to copy text to the clipboard, you just click the \i{left mouse
28 button} in the terminal window, and drag to \I{selecting text}select
29 text. When you let go of the button, the text is \e{automatically}
30 copied to the clipboard. You do not need to press Ctrl-C or
31 Ctrl-Ins; in fact, if you do press Ctrl-C, PuTTY will send a Ctrl-C
32 character down your session to the server where it will probably
33 cause a process to be interrupted.
35 Pasting is done using the right button (or the middle mouse button,
36 if you have a three-button mouse and have set it up; see
37 \k{config-mouse}). (Pressing \i{Shift-Ins}, or selecting \q{Paste}
38 from the Ctrl+right-click context menu, have the same effect.) When
39 you click the \i{right mouse button}, PuTTY will read whatever is in
40 the Windows clipboard and paste it into your session, \e{exactly} as
41 if it had been typed at the keyboard. (Therefore, be careful of
42 pasting formatted text into an editor that does automatic indenting;
43 you may find that the spaces pasted from the clipboard plus the
44 spaces added by the editor add up to too many spaces and ruin the
45 formatting. There is nothing PuTTY can do about this.)
47 If you \i{double-click} the left mouse button, PuTTY will select a
48 whole word. If you double-click, hold down the second click, and
49 drag the mouse, PuTTY will select a sequence of whole words. (You
50 can adjust precisely what PuTTY considers to be part of a word; see
51 \k{config-charclasses}.) If you \e{triple}-click, or
52 \i{triple-click} and drag, then PuTTY will select a whole line or
55 If you want to select a \I{rectangular selection}rectangular region
56 instead of selecting to the end of each line, you can do this by
57 holding down Alt when you make your selection. (You can also
58 configure rectangular selection to be the default, and then holding
59 down Alt gives the normal behaviour instead. See
60 \k{config-rectselect} for details.)
62 If you have a \i{middle mouse button}, then you can use it to
63 \I{adjusting a selection}adjust an existing selection if you
64 selected something slightly wrong. (If you have configured the
65 middle mouse button to paste, then the right mouse button does this
66 instead.) Click the button on the screen, and you can pick up the
67 nearest end of the selection and drag it to somewhere else.
69 It's possible for the server to ask to handle mouse clicks in the
70 PuTTY window itself. If this happens, the mouse cursor will turn
71 into an arrow, and using the mouse to copy and paste will only work if
72 you hold down Shift. See \k{config-features-mouse} and
73 \k{config-mouseshift} for details of this feature and how to configure
76 \S{using-scrollback} \I{scrollback}Scrolling the screen back
78 PuTTY keeps track of text that has scrolled up off the top of the
79 terminal. So if something appears on the screen that you want to
80 read, but it scrolls too fast and it's gone by the time you try to
81 look for it, you can use the scrollbar on the right side of the
82 window to look back up the session \i{history} and find it again.
84 As well as using the scrollbar, you can also page the scrollback up
85 and down by pressing \i{Shift-PgUp} and \i{Shift-PgDn}. You can
86 scroll a line at a time using \i{Ctrl-PgUp} and \i{Ctrl-PgDn}. These
87 are still available if you configure the scrollbar to be invisible.
89 By default the last 200 lines scrolled off the top are
90 preserved for you to look at. You can increase (or decrease) this
91 value using the configuration box; see \k{config-scrollback}.
93 \S{using-sysmenu} The \i{System menu}
95 If you click the left mouse button on the icon in the top left
96 corner of PuTTY's terminal window, or click the right mouse button
97 on the title bar, you will see the standard Windows system menu
98 containing items like Minimise, Move, Size and Close.
100 PuTTY's system menu contains extra program features in addition to
101 the Windows standard options. These extra menu commands are
104 (These options are also available in a context menu brought up
105 by holding Ctrl and clicking with the right mouse button anywhere
106 in the PuTTY window.)
108 \S2{using-eventlog} The PuTTY \i{Event Log}
110 If you choose \q{Event Log} from the system menu, a small window
111 will pop up in which PuTTY logs significant events during the
112 connection. Most of the events in the log will probably take place
113 during session startup, but a few can occur at any point in the
114 session, and one or two occur right at the end.
116 You can use the mouse to select one or more lines of the Event Log,
117 and hit the Copy button to copy them to the \i{clipboard}. If you
118 are reporting a bug, it's often useful to paste the contents of the
119 Event Log into your bug report.
121 \S2{using-specials} \ii{Special commands}
123 Depending on the protocol used for the current session, there may be
124 a submenu of \q{special commands}. These are protocol-specific
125 tokens, such as a \i{\q{break} signal}, that can be sent down a
126 connection in addition to normal data. Their precise effect is usually
127 up to the server. Currently only Telnet and SSH have special commands.
129 The following special commands are available in Telnet:
131 \b \I{Are You There, Telnet special command}Are You There
133 \b \I{Break, Telnet special command}Break
135 \b \I{Synch, Telnet special command}Synch
137 \b \I{Erase Character, Telnet special command}Erase Character
140 PuTTY can also be configured to send this when the Backspace key is
141 pressed; see \k{config-telnetkey}.
144 \b \I{Erase Line, Telnet special command}Erase Line
146 \b \I{Go Ahead, Telnet special command}Go Ahead
148 \b \I{No Operation, Telnet special command}No Operation
151 Should have no effect.
154 \b \I{Abort Process, Telnet special command}Abort Process
156 \b \I{Abort Output, Telnet special command}Abort Output
158 \b \I{Interrupt Process, Telnet special command}Interrupt Process
161 PuTTY can also be configured to send this when Ctrl-C is typed; see
162 \k{config-telnetkey}.
165 \b \I{Suspend Process, Telnet special command}Suspend Process
168 PuTTY can also be configured to send this when Ctrl-Z is typed; see
169 \k{config-telnetkey}.
172 \b \I{End Of Record, Telnet special command}End Of Record
174 \b \I{End Of File, Telnet special command}End Of File
176 In an SSH connection, the following special commands are available:
178 \b \I{IGNORE message, SSH special command}\I{No-op, in SSH}IGNORE message
181 Should have no effect.
184 \b \I{Break, SSH special command}Break
187 Only available in SSH-2, and only during a session. Optional
188 extension; may not be supported by server. PuTTY requests the server's
189 default break length.
192 \b \I{Signal, SSH special command}Signals (SIGINT, SIGTERM etc)
195 Only available in SSH-2, and only during a session. Sends various
196 POSIX signals. Not honoured by all servers.
199 \S2{using-newsession} Starting new sessions
201 PuTTY's system menu provides some shortcut ways to start new
204 \b Selecting \i{\q{New Session}} will start a completely new
205 instance of PuTTY, and bring up the configuration box as normal.
207 \b Selecting \i{\q{Duplicate Session}} will start a session with
208 precisely the same options as your current one - connecting to the
209 same host using the same protocol, with all the same terminal
210 settings and everything.
212 \b The \i{\q{Saved Sessions} submenu} gives you quick access to any
213 sets of stored session details you have previously saved. See
214 \k{config-saving} for details of how to create saved sessions.
216 \S2{using-changesettings} \I{settings, changing}Changing your
219 If you select \i{\q{Change Settings}} from the system menu, PuTTY will
220 display a cut-down version of its initial configuration box. This
221 allows you to adjust most properties of your current session. You
222 can change the terminal size, the font, the actions of various
223 keypresses, the colours, and so on.
225 Some of the options that are available in the main configuration box
226 are not shown in the cut-down Change Settings box. These are usually
227 options which don't make sense to change in the middle of a session
228 (for example, you can't switch from SSH to Telnet in mid-session).
230 \S2{using-copyall} \i{Copy All to Clipboard}
232 This system menu option provides a convenient way to copy the whole
233 contents of the terminal screen (up to the last nonempty line) and
234 scrollback to the \i{clipboard} in one go.
236 \S2{reset-terminal} \I{scrollback, clearing}Clearing and
237 \I{terminal, resetting}resetting the terminal
239 The \i{\q{Clear Scrollback}} option on the system menu tells PuTTY
240 to discard all the lines of text that have been kept after they
241 scrolled off the top of the screen. This might be useful, for
242 example, if you displayed sensitive information and wanted to make
243 sure nobody could look over your shoulder and see it. (Note that
244 this only prevents a casual user from using the scrollbar to view
245 the information; the text is not guaranteed not to still be in
248 The \i{\q{Reset Terminal}} option causes a full reset of the
249 terminal emulation. A VT-series terminal is a complex piece of
250 software and can easily get into a state where all the text printed
251 becomes unreadable. (This can happen, for example, if you
252 accidentally output a binary file to your terminal.) If this
253 happens, selecting Reset Terminal should sort it out.
255 \S2{using-fullscreen} \ii{Full screen} mode
257 If you find the title bar on a maximised window to be ugly or
258 distracting, you can select Full Screen mode to maximise PuTTY
259 \q{even more}. When you select this, PuTTY will expand to fill the
260 whole screen and its borders, title bar and scrollbar will
261 disappear. (You can configure the scrollbar not to disappear in
262 full-screen mode if you want to keep it; see \k{config-scrollback}.)
264 When you are in full-screen mode, you can still access the system
265 menu if you click the left mouse button in the \e{extreme} top left
266 corner of the screen.
268 \H{using-logging} Creating a \i{log file} of your \I{session
271 For some purposes you may find you want to log everything that
272 appears on your screen. You can do this using the \i{\q{Logging}
273 panel} in the configuration box.
275 To begin a session log, select \q{Change Settings} from the system
276 menu and go to the Logging panel. Enter a log file name, and select
277 a logging mode. (You can log all session output including the
278 terminal control sequences, or you can just log the printable text.
279 It depends what you want the log for.) Click \q{Apply} and your log
280 will be started. Later on, you can go back to the Logging panel and
281 select \q{Logging turned off completely} to stop logging; then PuTTY
282 will close the log file and you can safely read it.
284 See \k{config-logging} for more details and options.
286 \H{using-translation} Altering your \i{character set} configuration
288 If you find that special characters (\i{accented characters}, for
289 example, or \i{line-drawing characters}) are not being displayed
290 correctly in your PuTTY session, it may be that PuTTY is interpreting
291 the characters sent by the server according to the wrong \e{character
292 set}. There are a lot of different character sets available, so it's
293 entirely possible for this to happen.
295 If you click \q{Change Settings} and look at the \i{\q{Translation}
296 panel}, you should see a large number of character sets which you can
297 select, and other related options. Now all you need is to find out
298 which of them you want! (See \k{config-translation} for more
301 \H{using-x-forwarding} Using \i{X11 forwarding} in SSH
303 The SSH protocol has the ability to securely forward X Window System
304 applications over your encrypted SSH connection, so that you can run
305 an application on the SSH server machine and have it put its windows
306 up on your local machine without sending any X network traffic in
309 In order to use this feature, you will need an X display server for
310 your Windows machine, such as X-Win32 or Exceed. This will probably
311 install itself as display number 0 on your local machine; if it
312 doesn't, the manual for the \i{X server} should tell you what it
315 You should then tick the \q{Enable X11 forwarding} box in the
316 Tunnels panel (see \k{config-ssh-x11}) before starting your SSH
317 session. The \q{X display location} box is blank by default, which
318 means that PuTTY will try to use a sensible default such as \c{:0},
319 which is the usual display location where your X server will be
320 installed. If that needs changing, then change it.
322 Now you should be able to log in to the SSH server as normal. To
323 check that X forwarding has been successfully negotiated during
324 connection startup, you can check the PuTTY Event Log (see
325 \k{using-eventlog}). It should say something like this:
327 \c 2001-12-05 17:22:01 Requesting X11 forwarding
328 \c 2001-12-05 17:22:02 X11 forwarding enabled
330 If the remote system is Unix or Unix-like, you should also be able
331 to see that the \i{\c{DISPLAY} environment variable} has been set to
332 point at display 10 or above on the SSH server machine itself:
334 \c fred@unixbox:~$ echo $DISPLAY
337 If this works, you should then be able to run X applications in the
338 remote session and have them display their windows on your PC.
340 Note that if your PC X server requires authentication to connect,
341 then PuTTY cannot currently support it. If this is a problem for
342 you, you should mail the PuTTY authors \#{FIXME} and give details
345 For more options relating to X11 forwarding, see \k{config-ssh-x11}.
347 \H{using-port-forwarding} Using \i{port forwarding} in SSH
349 The SSH protocol has the ability to forward arbitrary network
350 connections over your encrypted SSH connection, to avoid the network
351 traffic being sent in clear. For example, you could use this to
352 connect from your home computer to a POP-3 server on a remote
353 machine without your POP-3 password being visible to network
356 In order to use port forwarding to connect from your local machine
357 to a port on a remote server, you need to:
359 \b Choose a port number on your local machine where PuTTY should
360 listen for incoming connections. There are likely to be plenty of
361 unused port numbers above 3000. (You can also use a local loopback
362 address here; see below for more details.)
364 \b Now, before you start your SSH connection, go to the Tunnels
365 panel (see \k{config-ssh-portfwd}). Make sure the \q{Local} radio
366 button is set. Enter the local port number into the \q{Source port}
367 box. Enter the destination host name and port number into the
368 \q{Destination} box, separated by a colon (for example,
369 \c{popserver.example.com:110} to connect to a POP-3 server).
371 \b Now click the \q{Add} button. The details of your port forwarding
372 should appear in the list box.
374 Now start your session and log in. (Port forwarding will not be
375 enabled until after you have logged in; otherwise it would be easy
376 to perform completely anonymous network attacks, and gain access to
377 anyone's virtual private network). To check that PuTTY has set up
378 the port forwarding correctly, you can look at the PuTTY Event Log
379 (see \k{using-eventlog}). It should say something like this:
381 \c 2001-12-05 17:22:10 Local port 3110 forwarding to
382 \c popserver.example.com:110
384 Now if you connect to the source port number on your local PC, you
385 should find that it answers you exactly as if it were the service
386 running on the destination machine. So in this example, you could
387 then configure an e-mail client to use \c{localhost:3110} as a POP-3
388 server instead of \c{popserver.example.com:110}. (Of course, the
389 forwarding will stop happening when your PuTTY session closes down.)
391 You can also forward ports in the other direction: arrange for a
392 particular port number on the \e{server} machine to be forwarded
393 back to your PC as a connection to a service on your PC or near it.
394 To do this, just select the \q{Remote} radio button instead of the
395 \q{Local} one. The \q{Source port} box will now specify a port
396 number on the \e{server} (note that most servers will not allow you
397 to use port numbers under 1024 for this purpose).
399 An alternative way to forward local connections to remote hosts is
400 to use \I{dynamic port forwarding}dynamic \I{SOCKS} proxying. For
401 this, you will need to select the \q{Dynamic} radio button instead
402 of \q{Local}, and then you should not enter anything into the
403 \q{Destination} box (it will be ignored). This will cause PuTTY to
404 listen on the port you have specified, and provide a SOCKS proxy
405 service to any programs which connect to that port. So, in
406 particular, you can forward other PuTTY connections through it by
407 setting up the Proxy control panel (see \k{config-proxy} for
410 The source port for a forwarded connection usually does not accept
411 connections from any machine except the SSH client or server machine
412 itself (for local and remote forwardings respectively). There are
413 controls in the Tunnels panel to change this:
415 \b The \q{Local ports accept connections from other hosts} option
416 allows you to set up local-to-remote port forwardings (including
417 dynamic port forwardings) in such a way that machines other than
418 your client PC can connect to the forwarded port.
420 \b The \q{Remote ports do the same} option does the same thing for
421 remote-to-local port forwardings (so that machines other than the
422 SSH server machine can connect to the forwarded port.) Note that
423 this feature is only available in the SSH 2 protocol, and not all
424 SSH 2 servers honour it (in OpenSSH, for example, it's usually
425 disabled by default).
427 You can also specify an \i{IP address} to listen on. Typically a
428 Windows machine can be asked to listen on any single IP address in
429 the \cw{127.*.*.*} range, and all of these are loopback addresses
430 available only to the local machine. So if you forward (for example)
431 \c{127.0.0.5:79} to a remote machine's \cw{finger} port, then you
432 should be able to run commands such as \c{finger fred@127.0.0.5}.
433 This can be useful if the program connecting to the forwarded port
434 doesn't allow you to change the port number it uses. This feature is
435 available for local-to-remote forwarded ports; SSH1 is unable to
436 support it for remote-to-local ports, while SSH2 can support it in
437 theory but servers will not necessarily cooperate.
439 (Note that if you're using Windows XP Service Pack 2, you may need
440 to obtain a fix from Microsoft in order to use addresses like
441 \cw{127.0.0.5} - see \k{faq-alternate-localhost}.)
443 \H{using-rawprot} Making \i{raw TCP connections}
445 A lot of \I{debugging Internet protocols}Internet protocols are
446 composed of commands and responses in plain text. For example,
447 \i{SMTP} (the protocol used to transfer e-mail), \i{NNTP} (the
448 protocol used to transfer Usenet news), and \i{HTTP} (the protocol
449 used to serve Web pages) all consist of commands in readable plain
452 Sometimes it can be useful to connect directly to one of these
453 services and speak the protocol \q{by hand}, by typing protocol
454 commands and watching the responses. On Unix machines, you can do
455 this using the system's \c{telnet} command to connect to the right
456 port number. For example, \c{telnet mailserver.example.com 25} might
457 enable you to talk directly to the SMTP service running on a mail
460 Although the Unix \c{telnet} program provides this functionality,
461 the protocol being used is not really Telnet. Really there is no
462 actual protocol at all; the bytes sent down the connection are
463 exactly the ones you type, and the bytes shown on the screen are
464 exactly the ones sent by the server. Unix \c{telnet} will attempt to
465 detect or guess whether the service it is talking to is a real
466 Telnet service or not; PuTTY prefers to be told for certain.
468 In order to make a debugging connection to a service of this type,
469 you simply select the fourth protocol name, \I{\q{Raw}
470 protocol}\q{Raw}, from the \q{Protocol} buttons in the \q{Session}
471 configuration panel. (See \k{config-hostname}.) You can then enter a
472 host name and a port number, and make the connection.
474 \H{using-cmdline} The PuTTY command line
476 PuTTY can be made to do various things without user intervention by
477 supplying \i{command-line arguments} (e.g., from a \i{command prompt
478 window}, or a \i{Windows shortcut}).
480 \S{using-cmdline-session} Starting a session from the command line
482 \I\c{-ssh}\I\c{-telnet}\I\c{-rlogin}\I\c{-raw}These options allow
483 you to bypass the configuration window and launch straight into a
486 To start a connection to a server called \c{host}:
488 \c putty.exe [-ssh | -telnet | -rlogin | -raw] [user@]host
490 If this syntax is used, settings are taken from the Default Settings
491 (see \k{config-saving}); \c{user} overrides these settings if
492 supplied. Also, you can specify a protocol, which will override the
493 default protocol (see \k{using-cmdline-protocol}).
495 For telnet sessions, the following alternative syntax is supported
496 (this makes PuTTY suitable for use as a URL handler for \i{telnet
497 URLs} in web browsers):
499 \c putty.exe telnet://host[:port]/
501 In order to start an existing saved session called \c{sessionname},
502 use the \c{-load} option (described in \k{using-cmdline-load}).
504 \c putty.exe -load "session name"
506 \S{using-cleanup} \i\c{-cleanup}
508 If invoked with the \c{-cleanup} option, rather than running as
509 normal, PuTTY will remove its registry entries and random seed file
510 from the local machine (after confirming with the user).
512 \S{using-general-opts} Standard command-line options
514 PuTTY and its associated tools support a range of command-line
515 options, most of which are consistent across all the tools. This
516 section lists the available options in all tools. Options which are
517 specific to a particular tool are covered in the chapter about that
520 \S2{using-cmdline-load} \i\c{-load}: load a saved session
522 \I{saved sessions, loading from command line}The \c{-load} option
523 causes PuTTY to load configuration details out of a saved session.
524 If these details include a host name, then this option is all you
525 need to make PuTTY start a session.
527 You need double quotes around the session name if it contains spaces.
529 If you want to create a Windows shortcut to start a PuTTY saved
530 session, this is the option you should use: your shortcut should
533 \c d:\path\to\putty.exe -load "my session"
535 (Note that PuTTY itself supports an alternative form of this option,
536 for backwards compatibility. If you execute \c{putty @sessionname}
537 it will have the same effect as \c{putty -load "sessionname"}. With
538 the \c{@} form, no double quotes are required, and the \c{@} sign
539 must be the very first thing on the command line. This form of the
540 option is deprecated.)
542 \S2{using-cmdline-protocol} Selecting a protocol: \c{-ssh},
543 \c{-telnet}, \c{-rlogin}, \c{-raw}
545 To choose which protocol you want to connect with, you can use one
548 \b \i\c{-ssh} selects the SSH protocol.
550 \b \i\c{-telnet} selects the Telnet protocol.
552 \b \i\c{-rlogin} selects the Rlogin protocol.
554 \b \i\c{-raw} selects the raw protocol.
556 These options are not available in the file transfer tools PSCP and
557 PSFTP (which only work with the SSH protocol).
559 These options are equivalent to the \i{protocol selection} buttons
560 in the Session panel of the PuTTY configuration box (see
561 \k{config-hostname}).
563 \S2{using-cmdline-v} \i\c{-v}: increase verbosity
565 \I{verbose mode}Most of the PuTTY tools can be made to tell you more
566 about what they are doing by supplying the \c{-v} option. If you are
567 having trouble when making a connection, or you're simply curious,
568 you can turn this switch on and hope to find out more about what is
571 \S2{using-cmdline-l} \i\c{-l}: specify a \i{login name}
573 You can specify the user name to log in as on the remote server
574 using the \c{-l} option. For example, \c{plink login.example.com -l
577 These options are equivalent to the username selection box in the
578 Connection panel of the PuTTY configuration box (see
579 \k{config-username}).
581 \S2{using-cmdline-portfwd} \I{-L-upper}\c{-L}, \I{-R-upper}\c{-R}
582 and \I{-D-upper}\c{-D}: set up \i{port forwardings}
584 As well as setting up port forwardings in the PuTTY configuration
585 (see \k{config-ssh-portfwd}), you can also set up forwardings on the
586 command line. The command-line options work just like the ones in
587 Unix \c{ssh} programs.
589 To forward a local port (say 5110) to a remote destination (say
590 \cw{popserver.example.com} port 110), you can write something like
593 \c putty -L 5110:popserver.example.com:110 -load mysession
594 \c plink mysession -L 5110:popserver.example.com:110
596 To forward a remote port to a local destination, just use the \c{-R}
597 option instead of \c{-L}:
599 \c putty -R 5023:mytelnetserver.myhouse.org:23 -load mysession
600 \c plink mysession -R 5023:mytelnetserver.myhouse.org:23
602 To specify an IP address for the listening end of the tunnel,
603 prepend it to the argument:
605 \c plink -L 127.0.0.5:23:localhost:23 myhost
607 To set up SOCKS-based dynamic port forwarding on a local port, use
608 the \c{-D} option. For this one you only have to pass the port
611 \c putty -D 4096 -load mysession
613 For general information on port forwarding, see
614 \k{using-port-forwarding}.
616 These options are not available in the file transfer tools PSCP and
619 \S2{using-cmdline-m} \i\c{-m}: read a remote command or script from
622 The \i\c{-m} option performs a similar function to the \q{Remote
623 command} box in the SSH panel of the PuTTY configuration box (see
624 \k{config-command}). However, the \c{-m} option expects to be given
625 a local file name, and it will read a command from that file. On
626 most Unix systems, you can even put multiple lines in this file and
627 execute more than one command in sequence, or a whole shell script;
628 but this will not work on all servers (and is known not to work
629 with certain \q{embedded} servers such as routers).
631 This option is not available in the file transfer tools PSCP and
634 \S2{using-cmdline-p} \I{-P-upper}\c{-P}: specify a \i{port number}
636 The \c{-P} option is used to specify the port number to connect to. If
637 you have a Telnet server running on port 9696 of a machine instead of
638 port 23, for example:
640 \c putty -telnet -P 9696 host.name
641 \c plink -telnet -P 9696 host.name
643 (Note that this option is more useful in Plink than in PuTTY,
644 because in PuTTY you can write \c{putty -telnet host.name 9696} in
647 This option is equivalent to the port number control in the Session
648 panel of the PuTTY configuration box (see \k{config-hostname}).
650 \S2{using-cmdline-pw} \i\c{-pw}: specify a \i{password}
652 A simple way to automate a remote login is to supply your password
653 on the command line. This is \e{not recommended} for reasons of
654 security. If you possibly can, we recommend you set up public-key
655 authentication instead. See \k{pubkey} for details.
657 Note that the \c{-pw} option only works when you are using the SSH
658 protocol. Due to fundamental limitations of Telnet and Rlogin, these
659 protocols do not support automated password authentication.
661 \S2{using-cmdline-agent} \I{-A-upper}\c{-A} and \i\c{-a}: control \i{agent
664 The \c{-A} option turns on SSH agent forwarding, and \c{-a} turns it
665 off. These options are only meaningful if you are using SSH.
667 See \k{pageant} for general information on \i{Pageant}, and
668 \k{pageant-forward} for information on agent forwarding. Note that
669 there is a security risk involved with enabling this option; see
670 \k{pageant-security} for details.
672 These options are equivalent to the agent forwarding checkbox in the
673 Auth panel of the PuTTY configuration box (see \k{config-ssh-agentfwd}).
675 These options are not available in the file transfer tools PSCP and
678 \S2{using-cmdline-x11} \I{-X-upper}\c{-X} and \i\c{-x}: control \i{X11
681 The \c{-X} option turns on X11 forwarding in SSH, and \c{-x} turns
682 it off. These options are only meaningful if you are using SSH.
684 For information on X11 forwarding, see \k{using-x-forwarding}.
686 These options are equivalent to the X11 forwarding checkbox in the
687 Tunnels panel of the PuTTY configuration box (see
690 These options are not available in the file transfer tools PSCP and
693 \S2{using-cmdline-pty} \i\c{-t} and \I{-T-upper}\c{-T}: control
694 \i{pseudo-terminal allocation}
696 The \c{-t} option ensures PuTTY attempts to allocate a
697 pseudo-terminal at the server, and \c{-T} stops it from allocating
698 one. These options are only meaningful if you are using SSH.
700 These options are equivalent to the \q{Don't allocate a
701 pseudo-terminal} checkbox in the SSH panel of the PuTTY
702 configuration box (see \k{config-ssh-pty}).
704 These options are not available in the file transfer tools PSCP and
707 \S2{using-cmdline-noshell} \I{-N-upper}\c{-N}: suppress starting a
710 The \c{-N} option prevents PuTTY from attempting to start a shell or
711 command on the remote server. You might want to use this option if
712 you are only using the SSH connection for port forwarding, and your
713 user account on the server does not have the ability to run a shell.
715 This feature is only available in SSH protocol version 2 (since the
716 version 1 protocol assumes you will always want to run a shell).
718 This option is equivalent to the \q{Don't start a shell or command
719 at all} checkbox in the SSH panel of the PuTTY configuration box
720 (see \k{config-ssh-noshell}).
722 These options are not available in the file transfer tools PSCP and
725 \S2{using-cmdline-compress} \I{-C-upper}\c{-C}: enable \i{compression}
727 The \c{-C} option enables compression of the data sent across the
728 network. This option is only meaningful if you are using SSH.
730 This option is equivalent to the \q{Enable compression} checkbox in
731 the SSH panel of the PuTTY configuration box (see
732 \k{config-ssh-comp}).
734 \S2{using-cmdline-sshprot} \i\c{-1} and \i\c{-2}: specify an \i{SSH
737 The \c{-1} and \c{-2} options force PuTTY to use version \I{SSH1}1
738 or version \I{SSH2}2 of the SSH protocol. These options are only
739 meaningful if you are using SSH.
741 These options are equivalent to selecting your preferred SSH
742 protocol version as \q{1 only} or \q{2 only} in the SSH panel of the
743 PuTTY configuration box (see \k{config-ssh-prot}).
745 \S2{using-cmdline-identity} \i\c{-i}: specify an SSH \i{private key}
747 The \c{-i} option allows you to specify the name of a private key
748 file in \c{*.PPK} format which PuTTY will use to authenticate with the
749 server. This option is only meaningful if you are using SSH.
751 For general information on \i{public-key authentication}, see
754 This option is equivalent to the \q{Private key file for
755 authentication} box in the Auth panel of the PuTTY configuration box
756 (see \k{config-ssh-privkey}).