PuTTY User Manual

PuTTY is a free (MIT-licensed) Windows Telnet and SSH

client. This manual documents PuTTY, and its companion
utilities PSCP, PSFTP, Plink, Pageant and PuTTYgen.

Note to Unix users: this manual currently primarily

documents the Windows versions of the PuTTY utilities.
Some options are therefore mentioned that are absent from
the Unix version; the Unix version has features not
described here; and the pterm and command-line puttygen
and pageant utilities are not described at all. The only Unix-
specific documentation that currently exists is the man
pages.

This manual is copyright 1997-2019 Simon Tatham. All

rights reserved. You may distribute this documentation
under the MIT licence. See appendix C for the licence text in
full.

Chapter 1: Introduction to PuTTY

1.1 What are SSH, Telnet and Rlogin?
1.2 How do SSH, Telnet and Rlogin differ?
Chapter 2: Getting started with PuTTY
2.1 Starting a session
2.2 Verifying the host key (SSH only)
2.3 Logging in
2.4 After logging in
2.5 Logging out
Chapter 3: Using PuTTY
3.1 During your session
3.2 Creating a log file of your session
3.3 Altering your character set configuration
3.4 Using X11 forwarding in SSH
3.5 Using port forwarding in SSH
 3.6 Making raw TCP connections
3.7 Connecting to a local serial line
3.8 The PuTTY command line
Chapter 4: Configuring PuTTY
4.1 The Session panel
4.2 The Logging panel
4.3 The Terminal panel
4.4 The Keyboard panel
4.5 The Bell panel
4.6 The Features panel
4.7 The Window panel
4.8 The Appearance panel
4.9 The Behaviour panel
4.10 The Translation panel
4.11 The Selection panel
4.12 The Copy panel
4.13 The Colours panel
4.14 The Connection panel
4.15 The Data panel
4.16 The Proxy panel
4.17 The Telnet panel
4.18 The Rlogin panel
4.19 The SSH panel
4.20 The Kex panel
4.21 The Host Keys panel
4.22 The Cipher panel
4.23 The Auth panel
4.24 The GSSAPI panel
4.25 The TTY panel
4.26 The X11 panel
4.27 The Tunnels panel
4.28 The Bugs and More Bugs panels
4.29 The Serial panel
4.30 Storing configuration in a file
Chapter 5: Using PSCP to transfer files securely
5.1 Starting PSCP
 5.2 PSCP Usage
Chapter 6: Using PSFTP to transfer files securely
6.1 Starting PSFTP
6.2 Running PSFTP
6.3 Using public key authentication with PSFTP
Chapter 7: Using the command-line connection tool
Plink
7.1 Starting Plink
7.2 Using Plink
7.3 Using Plink in batch files and scripts
7.4 Using Plink with CVS
7.5 Using Plink with WinCVS
Chapter 8: Using public keys for SSH authentication
8.1 Public key authentication - an introduction
8.2 Using PuTTYgen, the PuTTY key generator
8.3 Getting ready for public key authentication
Chapter 9: Using Pageant for authentication
9.1 Getting started with Pageant
9.2 The Pageant main window
9.3 The Pageant command line
9.4 Using agent forwarding
9.5 Security considerations
Chapter 10: Common error messages
10.1 ‘The server's host key is not cached in the
registry’
10.2 ‘WARNING - POTENTIAL SECURITY BREACH!’
10.3 ‘SSH protocol version 2 required by our
configuration but remote only provides (old,
insecure) SSH-1’
10.4 ‘The first cipher supported by the server is ...
below the configured warning threshold’
10.5 ‘Remote side sent disconnect message type 2
(protocol error): "Too many authentication failures
for root"’
10.6 ‘Out of memory’
 10.7 ‘Internal error’, ‘Internal fault’, ‘Assertion
failed’
10.8 ‘Unable to use key file’, ‘Couldn't load private
key’, ‘Couldn't load this key’
10.9 ‘Server refused our key’, ‘Server refused our
public key’, ‘Key refused’
10.10 ‘Access denied’, ‘Authentication refused’
10.11 ‘No supported authentication methods
available’
10.12 ‘Incorrect MAC received on packet’ or
‘Incorrect CRC received on packet’
10.13 ‘Incoming packet was garbled on decryption’
10.14 ‘PuTTY X11 proxy: various errors’
10.15 ‘Network error: Software caused connection
abort’
10.16 ‘Network error: Connection reset by peer’
10.17 ‘Network error: Connection refused’
10.18 ‘Network error: Connection timed out’
10.19 ‘Network error: Cannot assign requested
address’
Appendix A: PuTTY FAQ
A.1 Introduction
A.2 Features supported in PuTTY
A.3 Ports to other operating systems
A.4 Embedding PuTTY in other programs
A.5 Details of PuTTY's operation
A.6 HOWTO questions
A.7 Troubleshooting
A.8 Security questions
A.9 Administrative questions
A.10 Miscellaneous questions
Appendix B: Feedback and bug reporting
B.1 General guidelines
B.2 Reporting bugs
B.3 Reporting security vulnerabilities
B.4 Requesting extra features
 B.5 Requesting features that have already been
requested
B.6 Support requests
B.7 Web server administration
B.8 Asking permission for things
B.9 Mirroring the PuTTY web site
B.10 Praise and compliments
B.11 E-mail address
Appendix C: PuTTY Licence
Appendix D: PuTTY hacking guide
D.1 Cross-OS portability
D.2 Multiple backends treated equally
D.3 Multiple sessions per process on some platforms
D.4 C, not C++
D.5 Security-conscious coding
D.6 Independence of specific compiler
D.7 Small code size
D.8 Single-threaded code
D.9 Keystrokes sent to the server wherever possible
D.10 640×480 friendliness in configuration panels
D.11 Automatically generated Makefiles
D.12 Coroutines in the SSH code
D.13 Single compilation of each source file
D.14 Do as we say, not as we do
Appendix E: PuTTY download keys and signatures
E.1 Public keys
E.2 Security details
E.3 Key rollover
Appendix F: SSH-2 names specified for PuTTY
F.1 Connection protocol channel request names
F.2 Key exchange method names
F.3 Encryption algorithm names
Chapter 1: Introduction to PuTTY
PuTTY is a free SSH, Telnet and Rlogin client for Windows
systems.

1.1 What are SSH, Telnet and Rlogin?

1.2 How do SSH, Telnet and Rlogin differ?
1.1 What are SSH, Telnet and Rlogin?
If you already know what SSH, Telnet and Rlogin are, you
can safely skip on to the next section.

SSH, Telnet and Rlogin are three ways of doing the same
thing: logging in to a multi-user computer from another
computer, over a network.

Multi-user operating systems, such as Unix and VMS,

usually present a command-line interface to the user, much
like the ‘Command Prompt’ or ‘MS-DOS Prompt’ in
Windows. The system prints a prompt, and you type
commands which the system will obey.

Using this type of interface, there is no need for you to be

sitting at the same machine you are typing commands to.
The commands, and responses, can be sent over a network,
so you can sit at one computer and give commands to
another one, or even to more than one.

SSH, Telnet and Rlogin are network protocols that allow you
to do this. On the computer you sit at, you run a client,
which makes a network connection to the other computer
(the server). The network connection carries your
keystrokes and commands from the client to the server, and
carries the server's responses back to you.

These protocols can also be used for other types of

keyboard-based interactive session. In particular, there are
a lot of bulletin boards, talker systems and MUDs (Multi-
User Dungeons) which support access using Telnet. There
are even a few that support SSH.

You might want to use SSH, Telnet or Rlogin if:

 you have an account on a Unix or VMS system which
you want to be able to access from somewhere else
your Internet Service Provider provides you with a login
account on a web server. (This might also be known as
a shell account. A shell is the program that runs on the
server and interprets your commands for you.)
you want to use a bulletin board system, talker or MUD
which can be accessed using Telnet.

You probably do not want to use SSH, Telnet or Rlogin if:

you only use Windows. Windows computers have their

own ways of networking between themselves, and
unless you are doing something fairly unusual, you will
not need to use any of these remote login protocols.
1.2 How do SSH, Telnet and Rlogin
differ?
This list summarises some of the differences between SSH,
Telnet and Rlogin.

SSH (which stands for ‘secure shell’) is a recently

designed, high-security protocol. It uses strong
cryptography to protect your connection against
eavesdropping, hijacking and other attacks. Telnet and
Rlogin are both older protocols offering minimal
security.
SSH and Rlogin both allow you to log in to the server
without having to type a password. (Rlogin's method of
doing this is insecure, and can allow an attacker to
access your account on the server. SSH's method is
much more secure, and typically breaking the security
requires the attacker to have gained access to your
actual client machine.)
SSH allows you to connect to the server and
automatically send a command, so that the server will
run that command and then disconnect. So you can use
it in automated processing.

The Internet is a hostile environment and security is

everybody's responsibility. If you are connecting across the
open Internet, then we recommend you use SSH. If the
server you want to connect to doesn't support SSH, it might
be worth trying to persuade the administrator to install it.

If your client and server are both behind the same (good)
firewall, it is more likely to be safe to use Telnet or Rlogin,
but we still recommend you use SSH.
Chapter 2: Getting started with PuTTY
This chapter gives a quick guide to the simplest types of
interactive login session using PuTTY.

2.1 Starting a session

2.2 Verifying the host key (SSH only)
2.3 Logging in
2.4 After logging in
2.5 Logging out
2.1 Starting a session
When you start PuTTY, you will see a dialog box. This dialog
box allows you to control everything PuTTY can do. See
chapter 4 for details of all the things you can control.

You don't usually need to change most of the configuration

options. To start the simplest kind of session, all you need
to do is to enter a few basic parameters.

In the ‘Host Name’ box, enter the Internet host name of the
server you want to connect to. You should have been told
this by the provider of your login account.

Now select a login protocol to use, from the ‘Connection

type’ buttons. For a login session, you should select Telnet,
Rlogin or SSH. See section 1.2 for a description of the
differences between the three protocols, and advice on
which one to use. The fourth protocol, Raw, is not used for
interactive login sessions; you would usually use this for
debugging other Internet services (see section 3.6). The
fifth option, Serial, is used for connecting to a local serial
line, and works somewhat differently: see section 3.7 for
more information on this.

When you change the selected protocol, the number in the

‘Port’ box will change. This is normal: it happens because
the various login services are usually provided on different
network ports by the server machine. Most servers will use
the standard port numbers, so you will not need to change
the port setting. If your server provides login services on a
non-standard port, your system administrator should have
told you which one. (For example, many MUDs run Telnet
service on a port other than 23.)
Once you have filled in the ‘Host Name’, ‘Protocol’, and
possibly ‘Port’ settings, you are ready to connect. Press the
‘Open’ button at the bottom of the dialog box, and PuTTY
will begin trying to connect you to the server.
2.2 Verifying the host key (SSH only)
If you are not using the SSH protocol, you can skip this
section.

If you are using SSH to connect to a server for the first

time, you will probably see a message looking something
like this:
The server's host key is not cached in the registry. You
have no guarantee that the server is the computer you
think it is.
The server's rsa2 key fingerprint is:
ssh-rsa 1024 7b:e5:6f:a7:f4:f9:81:62:5c:e3:1f:bf:8b:57:6c:5a
If you trust this host, hit Yes to add the key to
PuTTY's cache and carry on connecting.
If you want to carry on connecting just once, without
adding the key to the cache, hit No.
If you do not trust this host, hit Cancel to abandon the
connection.

This is a feature of the SSH protocol. It is designed to

protect you against a network attack known as spoofing:
secretly redirecting your connection to a different computer,
so that you send your password to the wrong machine.
Using this technique, an attacker would be able to learn the
password that guards your login account, and could then
log in as if they were you and use the account for their own
purposes.

To prevent this attack, each server has a unique identifying

code, called a host key. These keys are created in a way
that prevents one server from forging another server's key.
So if you connect to a server and it sends you a different
host key from the one you were expecting, PuTTY can warn
you that the server may have been switched and that a
spoofing attack might be in progress.
PuTTY records the host key for each server you connect to,
in the Windows Registry. Every time you connect to a
server, it checks that the host key presented by the server
is the same host key as it was the last time you connected.
If it is not, you will see a warning, and you will have the
chance to abandon your connection before you type any
private information (such as a password) into it.

However, when you connect to a server you have not

connected to before, PuTTY has no way of telling whether
the host key is the right one or not. So it gives the warning
shown above, and asks you whether you want to trust this
host key or not.

Whether or not to trust the host key is your choice. If you

are connecting within a company network, you might feel
that all the network users are on the same side and
spoofing attacks are unlikely, so you might choose to trust
the key without checking it. If you are connecting across a
hostile network (such as the Internet), you should check
with your system administrator, perhaps by telephone or in
person. (Many servers have more than one host key. If the
system administrator sends you more than one fingerprint,
you should make sure the one PuTTY shows you is on the
list, but it doesn't matter which one it is.)

See section 4.21 for advanced options for managing host

keys.
2.3 Logging in
After you have connected, and perhaps verified the server's
host key, you will be asked to log in, probably using a
username and a password. Your system administrator
should have provided you with these. (If, instead, your
system administrator has asked you to provide, or provided
you with, a ‘public key’ or ‘key file’, see chapter 8.)

PuTTY will display a text window (the ‘terminal window’ – it

will have a black background unless you've changed the
defaults), and prompt you to type your username and
password into that window. (These prompts will include the
PuTTY icon, to distinguish them from any text sent by the
server in the same window.)

Enter the username and the password, and the server

should grant you access and begin your session. If you have
mistyped your password, most servers will give you several
chances to get it right.

While you are typing your password, you will not usually
see the cursor moving in the window, but PuTTY is
registering what you type, and will send it when you press
Return. (It works this way to avoid revealing the length of
your password to anyone watching your screen.)

If you are using SSH, be careful not to type your username

wrongly, because you will not have a chance to correct it
after you press Return; many SSH servers do not permit
you to make two login attempts using different usernames.
If you type your username wrongly, you must close PuTTY
and start again.
If your password is refused but you are sure you have typed
it correctly, check that Caps Lock is not enabled. Many login
servers, particularly Unix computers, treat upper case and
lower case as different when checking your password; so if
Caps Lock is on, your password will probably be refused.
2.4 After logging in
After you log in to the server, what happens next is up to
the server! Most servers will print some sort of login
message and then present a prompt, at which you can type
commands which the server will carry out. Some servers
will offer you on-line help; others might not. If you are in
doubt about what to do next, consult your system
administrator.
2.5 Logging out
When you have finished your session, you should log out by
typing the server's own logout command. This might vary
between servers; if in doubt, try logout or exit, or consult a
manual or your system administrator. When the server
processes your logout command, the PuTTY window should
close itself automatically.

You can close a PuTTY session using the Close button in the
window border, but this might confuse the server - a bit like
hanging up a telephone unexpectedly in the middle of a
conversation. We recommend you do not do this unless the
server has stopped responding to you and you cannot close
the window any other way.
Chapter 3: Using PuTTY
This chapter provides a general introduction to some more
advanced features of PuTTY. For extreme detail and
reference purposes, chapter 4 is likely to contain more
information.

3.1 During your session

3.1.1 Copying and pasting text
3.1.2 Scrolling the screen back
3.1.3 The System menu
3.2 Creating a log file of your session
3.3 Altering your character set configuration
3.4 Using X11 forwarding in SSH
3.5 Using port forwarding in SSH
3.6 Making raw TCP connections
3.7 Connecting to a local serial line
3.8 The PuTTY command line
3.8.1 Starting a session from the command line
3.8.2 -cleanup
3.8.3 Standard command-line options
3.1 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.

3.1.1 Copying and pasting text

3.1.2 Scrolling the screen back
3.1.3 The System menu
3.1.3.1 The PuTTY Event Log
3.1.3.2 Special commands
3.1.3.3 Starting new sessions
3.1.3.4 Changing your session settings
3.1.3.5 Copy All to Clipboard
3.1.3.6 Clearing and resetting the terminal
3.1.3.7 Full screen mode
3.1.1 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.

By default, PuTTY's copy and paste works entirely with the

mouse. (This will be familiar to people who have used xterm
on Unix.) 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
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 into PuTTY is done using the right button (or the
middle mouse button, if you have a three-button mouse and
have set it up; see section 4.11.1). (Pressing Shift-Ins, or
selecting ‘Paste’ from the Ctrl+right-click context menu,
have 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. By default, this
behaves exactly as if the clipboard contents had been typed
at the keyboard; therefore, be careful of pasting formatted
text into an editor that does automatic indenting, as 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. (Some remote applications can ask
PuTTY to identify text that is being pasted, to avoid this sort
of problem; but if your application does not, there is
nothing PuTTY can do to avoid 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 section 4.12.1.) If you 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
section 4.11.3 for details.

(In some Unix environments, Alt+drag is intercepted by the

window manager. Shift+Alt+drag should work for
rectangular selection as well, so you could try that instead.)

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.

If you are running PuTTY itself on Unix (not just using it to

connect to a Unix system from Windows), by default you
will likely have to use similar mouse actions in other
applications to paste the text you copied from PuTTY, and to
copy text for pasting into PuTTY; actions like Ctrl-C and Ctrl-
V will likely not behave as you expect. Section 4.11.4
explains why this is, and how you can change the
behaviour. (On Windows there is only a single selection
shared with other applications, so this confusion does not
arise.)

It's possible for the server to ask to handle mouse clicks in

the PuTTY window itself. If this happens, the mouse pointer
will turn into an arrow, and using the mouse to copy and
paste will only work if you hold down Shift. See section
4.6.2 and section 4.11.2 for details of this feature and how
to configure it.

You can customise much of this behaviour, for instance to

enable copy and paste from the keyboard; see section 4.11.
3.1.2 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. You can scroll a line at a time using Ctrl-PgUp and
Ctrl-PgDn, or to the top/bottom of the scrollback with Ctrl-
Shift-PgUp and Ctrl-Shift-PgDn. These are still available if
you configure the scrollbar to be invisible.

By default the last 2000 lines scrolled off the top are
preserved for you to look at. You can increase (or decrease)
this value using the configuration box; see section 4.7.3.
3.1.3 The System menu
If you click the left mouse button on the icon in the top left
corner of PuTTY's terminal 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.

(These options are also available in a context menu brought

up by holding Ctrl and clicking with the right mouse button
anywhere in the PuTTY window.)

3.1.3.1 The PuTTY Event Log

3.1.3.2 Special commands
3.1.3.3 Starting new sessions
3.1.3.4 Changing your session settings
3.1.3.5 Copy All to Clipboard
3.1.3.6 Clearing and resetting the terminal
3.1.3.7 Full screen mode
3.1.3.1 The PuTTY Event Log
If you choose ‘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.

(The Event Log is not the same as the facility to create a log
file of your session; that's described in section 3.2.)
3.1.3.2 Special commands
Depending on the protocol used for the current session,
there may be a submenu of ‘special commands’. These are
protocol-specific tokens, such as a ‘break’ signal, that can
be sent down a connection in addition to normal data. Their
precise effect is usually up to the server. Currently only
Telnet, SSH, and serial connections have special commands.

The ‘break’ signal can also be invoked from the keyboard

with Ctrl-Break.

In an SSH connection, the following special commands are

available:

IGNORE message

Should have no effect.

Repeat key exchange

Only available in SSH-2. Forces a repeat key exchange

immediately (and resets associated timers and
counters). For more information about repeat key
exchanges, see section 4.20.2.

Cache new host key type

Only available in SSH-2. This submenu appears only if

the server has host keys of a type that PuTTY doesn't
already have cached, and so won't consider. Selecting a
key here will allow PuTTY to use that key now and in
future: PuTTY will do a fresh key-exchange with the
selected key, and immediately add that key to its
permanent cache (relying on the host key used at the
start of the connection to cross-certify the new key).
 That key will be used for the rest of the current session;
it may not actually be used for future sessions,
depending on your preferences (see section 4.21.1).

Normally, PuTTY will carry on using a host key it already

knows, even if the server offers key formats that PuTTY
would otherwise prefer, to avoid host key prompts. As a
result, if you've been using a server for some years, you
may still be using an older key than a new user would
use, due to server upgrades in the meantime. The SSH
protocol unfortunately does not have organised facilities
for host key migration and rollover, but this allows you
to manually upgrade.

Break

Only available in SSH-2, and only during a session.

Optional extension; may not be supported by server.
PuTTY requests the server's default break length.

Signals (SIGINT, SIGTERM etc)

Only available in SSH-2, and only during a session.

Sends various POSIX signals. Not honoured by all
servers.

The following special commands are available in Telnet:

Are You There

Break
Synch
Erase Character

PuTTY can also be configured to send this when the

Backspace key is pressed; see section 4.17.3.

Erase Line
 Go Ahead
No Operation

Should have no effect.

Abort Process
Abort Output
Interrupt Process

PuTTY can also be configured to send this when Ctrl-C is

typed; see section 4.17.3.

Suspend Process

PuTTY can also be configured to send this when Ctrl-Z is

typed; see section 4.17.3.

End Of Record
End Of File

With a serial connection, the only available special

command is ‘Break’.
3.1.3.3 Starting new sessions
PuTTY's system menu provides some shortcut ways to start
new sessions:

Selecting ‘New Session’ will start a completely new

instance of PuTTY, and bring up the configuration box as
normal.
Selecting ‘Duplicate Session’ will start a session in a
new window 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.
In an inactive window, selecting ‘Restart Session’ will do
the same as ‘Duplicate Session’, but in the current
window.
The ‘Saved Sessions’ submenu gives you quick access
to any sets of stored session details you have previously
saved. See section 4.1.2 for details of how to create
saved sessions.
3.1.3.4 Changing your session
settings
If you select ‘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).

You can save the current settings to a saved session for

future use from this dialog box. See section 4.1.2 for more
on saved sessions.
3.1.3.5 Copy All to Clipboard
This system menu option provides a convenient way to copy
the whole contents of the terminal screen (up to the last
nonempty line) and scrollback to the clipboard in one go.
3.1.3.6 Clearing and resetting the
terminal
The ‘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 ‘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.
3.1.3.7 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 ‘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
section 4.7.3.)

When you are in full-screen mode, you can still access the
system menu if you click the left mouse button in the
extreme top left corner of the screen.
3.2 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
‘Logging’ panel in the configuration box.

To begin a session log, select ‘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 ‘Apply’ and your log will be started. Later on, you
can go back to the Logging panel and select ‘Logging turned
off completely’ to stop logging; then PuTTY will close the log
file and you can safely read it.

See section 4.2 for more details and options.

3.3 Altering your character set
configuration
If you find that special characters (accented characters, for
example, or line-drawing characters) 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 character set. There are a lot of
different character sets available, and no good way for
PuTTY to know which to use, so it's entirely possible for this
to happen.

If you click ‘Change Settings’ and look at the ‘Translation’

panel, you should see a large number of character sets
which you can select, and other related options. Now all you
need is to find out which of them you want! (See section
4.10 for more information.)
3.4 Using X11 forwarding in SSH
The SSH protocol has the ability to securely forward X
Window System graphical 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 Cygwin/X, 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 ‘Enable X11 forwarding’ box in the
X11 panel (see section 4.26) before starting your SSH
session. The ‘X display location’ box is blank by default,
which means that PuTTY will try to use a sensible default
such as :0, 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 section 3.1.3.1). It should say
something like this:
2001-12-05 17:22:01 Requesting X11 forwarding
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 DISPLAY environment variable has
been set to point at display 10 or above on the SSH server
machine itself:
fred@unixbox:~$ echo $DISPLAY
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.

For more options relating to X11 forwarding, see section

4.26.
3.5 Using port forwarding in SSH
The SSH protocol has the ability to forward arbitrary
network (TCP) 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:

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
below for more details.)
Now, before you start your SSH connection, go to the
Tunnels panel (see section 4.27). Make sure the ‘Local’
radio button is set. Enter the local port number into the
‘Source port’ box. Enter the destination host name and
port number into the ‘Destination’ box, separated by a
colon (for example, popserver.example.com:110 to connect
to a POP-3 server).
Now click the ‘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 section 3.1.3.1). It should say something like this:
2001-12-05 17:22:10 Local port 3110 forwarding to
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
localhost:3110 as a POP-3 server instead of
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 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 ‘Remote’ radio
button instead of the ‘Local’ one. The ‘Source port’ box will
now specify a port number on the server (note that most
servers will not allow you to use port numbers under 1024
for this purpose).

An alternative way to forward local connections to remote

hosts is to use dynamic SOCKS proxying. In this mode,
PuTTY acts as a SOCKS server, which SOCKS-aware
programs can connect to and open forwarded connections
to the destination of their choice, so this can be an
alternative to long lists of static forwardings. To use this
mode, you will need to select the ‘Dynamic’ radio button
instead of ‘Local’, and then you should not enter anything
into the ‘Destination’ box (it will be ignored). PuTTY will
then listen for SOCKS connections on the port you have
specified. Most web browsers can be configured to connect
to this SOCKS proxy service; also, you can forward other
PuTTY connections through it by setting up the Proxy
control panel (see section 4.16 for details).

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:

The ‘Local ports accept connections from other hosts’

option allows you to set up local-to-remote port
forwardings (including dynamic port forwardings) in
such a way that machines other than your client PC can
connect to the forwarded port.
The ‘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 honour it (in OpenSSH, for example, it's usually
disabled by default).

You can also specify an IP address to listen on. Typically a

Windows machine can be asked to listen on any single IP
address in the 127.*.*.* range, and all of these are loopback
addresses available only to the local machine. So if you
forward (for example) 127.0.0.5:79 to a remote machine's
finger port, then you should be able to run commands such
as finger [email protected]. This can be useful if the program
connecting to the forwarded port doesn't allow you to
change the port number it uses. This feature is available for
local-to-remote forwarded ports; SSH-1 is unable to support
it for remote-to-local ports, while SSH-2 can support it in
theory but servers will not necessarily cooperate.

(Note that if you're using Windows XP Service Pack 2, you

may need to obtain a fix from Microsoft in order to use
addresses like 127.0.0.5 - see question A.7.17.)

For more options relating to port forwarding, see section

4.27.
If the connection you are forwarding over SSH is itself a
second SSH connection made by another copy of PuTTY, you
might find the ‘logical host name’ configuration option
useful to warn PuTTY of which host key it should be
expecting. See section 4.14.5 for details of this.
3.6 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 ‘by hand’, by typing
protocol commands and watching the responses. On Unix
machines, you can do this using the system's telnet
command to connect to the right port number. For example,
telnet mailserver.example.com 25 might enable you to talk
directly to the SMTP service running on a mail server.

Although the Unix 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 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, ‘Raw’,
from the ‘Protocol’ buttons in the ‘Session’ configuration
panel. (See section 4.1.1.) You can then enter a host name
and a port number, and make the connection.
3.7 Connecting to a local serial line
PuTTY can connect directly to a local serial line as an
alternative to making a network connection. In this mode,
text typed into the PuTTY window will be sent straight out of
your computer's serial port, and data received through that
port will be displayed in the PuTTY window. You might use
this mode, for example, if your serial port is connected to
another computer which has a serial connection.

To make a connection of this type, simply select ‘Serial’

from the ‘Connection type’ radio buttons on the ‘Session’
configuration panel (see section 4.1.1). The ‘Host Name’
and ‘Port’ boxes will transform into ‘Serial line’ and ‘Speed’,
allowing you to specify which serial line to use (if your
computer has more than one) and what speed (baud rate)
to use when transferring data. For further configuration
options (data bits, stop bits, parity, flow control), you can
use the ‘Serial’ configuration panel (see section 4.29).

After you start up PuTTY in serial mode, you might find that
you have to make the first move, by sending some data out
of the serial line in order to notify the device at the other
end that someone is there for it to talk to. This probably
depends on the device. If you start up a PuTTY serial
session and nothing appears in the window, try pressing
Return a few times and see if that helps.

A serial line provides no well defined means for one end of

the connection to notify the other that the connection is
finished. Therefore, PuTTY in serial mode will remain
connected until you close the window using the close
button.
3.8 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).

3.8.1 Starting a session from the command line

3.8.2 -cleanup
3.8.3 Standard command-line options
3.8.3.1 -load: load a saved session
3.8.3.2 Selecting a protocol: -ssh, -telnet, -rlogin, -
raw -serial
3.8.3.3 -v: increase verbosity
3.8.3.4 -l: specify a login name
3.8.3.5 -L, -R and -D: set up port forwardings
3.8.3.6 -m: read a remote command or script from a
file
3.8.3.7 -P: specify a port number
3.8.3.8 -pw: specify a password
3.8.3.9 -agent and -noagent: control use of Pageant
for authentication
3.8.3.10 -A and -a: control agent forwarding
3.8.3.11 -X and -x: control X11 forwarding
3.8.3.12 -t and -T: control pseudo-terminal
allocation
3.8.3.13 -N: suppress starting a shell or command
3.8.3.14 -nc: make a remote network connection in
place of a remote shell or command
3.8.3.15 -C: enable compression
3.8.3.16 -1 and -2: specify an SSH protocol version
3.8.3.17 -4 and -6: specify an Internet protocol
version
3.8.3.18 -i: specify an SSH private key
3.8.3.19 -loghost: specify a logical host name
3.8.3.20 -hostkey: manually specify an expected
host key
3.8.3.21 -pgpfp: display PGP key fingerprints
3.8.3.22 -sercfg: specify serial port configuration
3.8.3.23 -sessionlog, -sshlog, -sshrawlog: specify
session logging
3.8.3.24 -proxycmd: specify a local proxy command
3.8.3.25 -restrict-acl: restrict the Windows process
ACL
3.8.1 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 host:

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

If this syntax is used, settings are taken from the Default

Settings (see section 4.1.2); user overrides these settings if
supplied. Also, you can specify a protocol, which will
override the default protocol (see section 3.8.3.2).

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):
putty.exe telnet://host[:port]/

To start a connection to a serial port, e.g. COM1:

putty.exe -serial com1

In order to start an existing saved session called sessionname,

use the -load option (described in section 3.8.3.1).
putty.exe -load "session name"
3.8.2 -cleanup

If invoked with the -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). It will also attempt to remove information about
recently launched sessions stored in the ‘jump list’ on
Windows 7 and up.

Note that on multi-user systems, -cleanup only removes

registry entries and files associated with the currently
logged-in user.
3.8.3 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.

3.8.3.1 -load: load a saved session

3.8.3.2 Selecting a protocol: -ssh, -telnet, -rlogin, -raw -
serial
3.8.3.3 -v: increase verbosity
3.8.3.4 -l: specify a login name
3.8.3.5 -L, -R and -D: set up port forwardings
3.8.3.6 -m: read a remote command or script from a file
3.8.3.7 -P: specify a port number
3.8.3.8 -pw: specify a password
3.8.3.9 -agent and -noagent: control use of Pageant for
authentication
3.8.3.10 -A and -a: control agent forwarding
3.8.3.11 -X and -x: control X11 forwarding
3.8.3.12 -t and -T: control pseudo-terminal allocation
3.8.3.13 -N: suppress starting a shell or command
3.8.3.14 -nc: make a remote network connection in
place of a remote shell or command
3.8.3.15 -C: enable compression
3.8.3.16 -1 and -2: specify an SSH protocol version
3.8.3.17 -4 and -6: specify an Internet protocol version
3.8.3.18 -i: specify an SSH private key
3.8.3.19 -loghost: specify a logical host name
3.8.3.20 -hostkey: manually specify an expected host
key
3.8.3.21 -pgpfp: display PGP key fingerprints
3.8.3.22 -sercfg: specify serial port configuration
3.8.3.23 -sessionlog, -sshlog, -sshrawlog: specify session
logging
3.8.3.24 -proxycmd: specify a local proxy command
3.8.3.25 -restrict-acl: restrict the Windows process ACL
3.8.3.1 -load: load a saved session
The -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.

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
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 putty
@sessionname it will have the same effect as putty -load
"sessionname". With the @ form, no double quotes are
required, and the @ sign must be the very first thing on the
command line. This form of the option is deprecated.)
3.8.3.2 Selecting a protocol: -ssh, -
telnet, -rlogin, -raw -serial

To choose which protocol you want to connect with, you can

use one of these options:

-ssh selects the SSH protocol.

-telnet selects the Telnet protocol.
-rlogin selects the Rlogin protocol.
-raw selects the raw protocol.
-serial selects a serial connection.

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 section 4.1.1).
3.8.3.3 -v: increase verbosity
Most of the PuTTY tools can be made to tell you more about
what they are doing by supplying the -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.
3.8.3.4 -l: specify a login name
You can specify the user name to log in as on the remote
server using the -l option. For example, 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
section 4.15.1).
3.8.3.5 -L, -R and -D: set up port
forwardings
As well as setting up port forwardings in the PuTTY
configuration (see section 4.27), you can also set up
forwardings on the command line. The command-line
options work just like the ones in Unix ssh programs.

To forward a local port (say 5110) to a remote destination

(say popserver.example.com port 110), you can write
something like one of these:
putty -L 5110:popserver.example.com:110 -load mysession
plink mysession -L 5110:popserver.example.com:110

To forward a remote port to a local destination, just use the

-R option instead of -L:

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

plink mysession -R 5023:mytelnetserver.myhouse.org:23

To specify an IP address for the listening end of the tunnel,

prepend it to the argument:
plink -L 127.0.0.5:23:localhost:23 myhost

To set up SOCKS-based dynamic port forwarding on a local

port, use the -D option. For this one you only have to pass
the port number:
putty -D 4096 -load mysession

For general information on port forwarding, see section 3.5.

These options are not available in the file transfer tools

PSCP and PSFTP.
3.8.3.6 -m: read a remote command or
script from a file
The -m option performs a similar function to the ‘Remote
command’ box in the SSH panel of the PuTTY configuration
box (see section 4.19.1). However, the -m option expects to
be given a local file name, and it will read a command from
that file.

With some servers (particularly Unix systems), you can

even put multiple lines in this file and execute more than
one command in sequence, or a whole shell script; but this
is arguably an abuse, and cannot be expected to work on all
servers. In particular, it is known not to work with certain
‘embedded’ servers, such as Cisco routers.

This option is not available in the file transfer tools PSCP

and PSFTP.
3.8.3.7 -P: specify a port number
The -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:
putty -telnet -P 9696 host.name
plink -telnet -P 9696 host.name

(Note that this option is more useful in Plink than in PuTTY,

because in PuTTY you can write putty -telnet host.name 9696
in any case.)

This option is equivalent to the port number control in the

Session panel of the PuTTY configuration box (see section
4.1.1).
3.8.3.8 -pw: specify a password
A simple way to automate a remote login is to supply your
password on the command line. This is not recommended
for reasons of security. If you possibly can, we recommend
you set up public-key authentication instead. See chapter 8
for details.

Note that the -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.
3.8.3.9 -agent and -noagent: control use
of Pageant for authentication
The -agent option turns on SSH authentication using
Pageant, and -noagent turns it off. These options are only
meaningful if you are using SSH.

See chapter 9 for general information on Pageant.

These options are equivalent to the agent authentication

checkbox in the Auth panel of the PuTTY configuration box
(see section 4.23.3).
3.8.3.10 -A and -a: control agent
forwarding
The -A option turns on SSH agent forwarding, and -a turns it
off. These options are only meaningful if you are using SSH.

See chapter 9 for general information on Pageant, and

section 9.4 for information on agent forwarding. Note that
there is a security risk involved with enabling this option;
see section 9.5 for details.

These options are equivalent to the agent forwarding

checkbox in the Auth panel of the PuTTY configuration box
(see section 4.23.6).

These options are not available in the file transfer tools

PSCP and PSFTP.
3.8.3.11 -X and -x: control X11
forwarding
The -X option turns on X11 forwarding in SSH, and -x turns
it off. These options are only meaningful if you are using
SSH.

For information on X11 forwarding, see section 3.4.

These options are equivalent to the X11 forwarding

checkbox in the X11 panel of the PuTTY configuration box
(see section 4.26).

These options are not available in the file transfer tools

PSCP and PSFTP.
3.8.3.12 -t and -T: control pseudo-
terminal allocation
The -t option ensures PuTTY attempts to allocate a pseudo-
terminal at the server, and -T stops it from allocating one.
These options are only meaningful if you are using SSH.

These options are equivalent to the ‘Don't allocate a

pseudo-terminal’ checkbox in the SSH panel of the PuTTY
configuration box (see section 4.25.1).

These options are not available in the file transfer tools

PSCP and PSFTP.
3.8.3.13 -N: suppress starting a shell
or command
The -N option prevents PuTTY from attempting to start a
shell or command on the remote server. You might want to
use this option if you are only using the SSH connection for
port forwarding, and your user account on the server does
not have the ability to run a shell.

This feature is only available in SSH protocol version 2

(since the version 1 protocol assumes you will always want
to run a shell).

This option is equivalent to the ‘Don't start a shell or

command at all’ checkbox in the SSH panel of the PuTTY
configuration box (see section 4.19.2).

This option is not available in the file transfer tools PSCP

and PSFTP.
3.8.3.14 -nc: make a remote network
connection in place of a remote shell
or command
The -nc option prevents Plink (or PuTTY) from attempting to
start a shell or command on the remote server. Instead, it
will instruct the remote server to open a network connection
to a host name and port number specified by you, and treat
that network connection as if it were the main session.

You specify a host and port as an argument to the -nc

option, with a colon separating the host name from the port
number, like this:
plink host1.example.com -nc host2.example.com:1234

You might want to use this feature if you needed to make

an SSH connection to a target host which you can only
reach by going through a proxy host, and rather than using
port forwarding you prefer to use the local proxy feature
(see section 4.16.1 for more about local proxies). In this
situation you might select ‘Local’ proxy type, set your local
proxy command to be ‘plink %proxyhost -nc %host:%port’,
enter the target host name on the Session panel, and enter
the directly reachable proxy host name on the Proxy panel.

This feature is only available in SSH protocol version 2

(since the version 1 protocol assumes you will always want
to run a shell). It is not available in the file transfer tools
PSCP and PSFTP. It is available in PuTTY itself, although it is
unlikely to be very useful in any tool other than Plink. Also,
-nc uses the same server functionality as port forwarding,
so it will not work if your server administrator has disabled
port forwarding.
(The option is named -nc after the Unix program nc, short
for ‘netcat’. The command ‘plink host1 -nc host2:port’ is very
similar in functionality to ‘plink host1 nc host2 port’, which
invokes nc on the server and tells it to connect to the
specified destination. However, Plink's built-in -nc option
does not depend on the nc program being installed on the
server.)
3.8.3.15 -C: enable compression
The -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 ‘Enable compression’

checkbox in the SSH panel of the PuTTY configuration box
(see section 4.19.3).
3.8.3.16 -1 and -2: specify an SSH
protocol version
The -1 and -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 the SSH protocol

version in the SSH panel of the PuTTY configuration box
(see section 4.19.4).
3.8.3.17 -4 and -6: specify an Internet
protocol version
The -4 and -6 options force PuTTY to use the older Internet
protocol IPv4 or the newer IPv6 for most outgoing
connections.

These options are equivalent to selecting your preferred

Internet protocol version as ‘IPv4’ or ‘IPv6’ in the
Connection panel of the PuTTY configuration box (see
section 4.14.4).
3.8.3.18 -i: specify an SSH private
key
The -i option allows you to specify the name of a private
key file in *.PPK format which PuTTY will use to authenticate
with the server. This option is only meaningful if you are
using SSH.

If you are using Pageant, you can also specify a public key
file (in RFC 4716 or OpenSSH format) to identify a specific
key file to use. (This won't work if you're not running
Pageant, of course.)

For general information on public-key authentication, see

chapter 8.

This option is equivalent to the ‘Private key file for

authentication’ box in the Auth panel of the PuTTY
configuration box (see section 4.23.8).
3.8.3.19 -loghost: specify a logical host
name
This option overrides PuTTY's normal SSH host key caching
policy by telling it the name of the host you expect your
connection to end up at (in cases where this differs from the
location PuTTY thinks it's connecting to). It can be a plain
host name, or a host name followed by a colon and a port
number. See section 4.14.5 for more detail on this.
3.8.3.20 -hostkey: manually specify an
expected host key
This option overrides PuTTY's normal SSH host key caching
policy by telling it exactly what host key to expect, which
can be useful if the normal automatic host key store in the
Registry is unavailable. The argument to this option should
be either a host key fingerprint, or an SSH-2 public key
blob. See section 4.21.2 for more information.

You can specify this option more than once if you want to
configure more than one key to be accepted.
3.8.3.21 -pgpfp: display PGP key
fingerprints
This option causes the PuTTY tools not to run as normal, but
instead to display the fingerprints of the PuTTY PGP Master
Keys, in order to aid with verifying new versions. See
appendix E for more information.
3.8.3.22 -sercfg: specify serial port
configuration
This option specifies the configuration parameters for the
serial port (baud rate, stop bits etc). Its argument is
interpreted as a comma-separated list of configuration
options, which can be as follows:

Any single digit from 5 to 9 sets the number of data

bits.
‘1’, ‘1.5’ or ‘2’ sets the number of stop bits.
Any other numeric string is interpreted as a baud rate.
A single lower-case letter specifies the parity: ‘n’ for
none, ‘o’ for odd, ‘e’ for even, ‘m’ for mark and ‘s’ for
space.
A single upper-case letter specifies the flow control: ‘N’
for none, ‘X’ for XON/XOFF, ‘R’ for RTS/CTS and ‘D’ for
DSR/DTR.

For example, ‘-sercfg 19200,8,n,1,N’ denotes a baud rate of

19200, 8 data bits, no parity, 1 stop bit and no flow control.
3.8.3.23 -sessionlog, -sshlog, -sshrawlog:
specify session logging
These options cause the PuTTY network tools to write out a
log file. Each of them expects a file name as an argument,
e.g. ‘-sshlog putty.log’ causes an SSH packet log to be
written to a file called ‘putty.log’. The three different options
select different logging modes, all available from the GUI
too:

-sessionlog selects ‘All session output’ logging mode.

-sshlog selects ‘SSH packets’ logging mode.
-sshrawlog selects ‘SSH packets and raw data’ logging
mode.

For more information on logging configuration, see section

4.2.
3.8.3.24 -proxycmd: specify a local proxy
command
This option enables PuTTY's mode for running a command
on the local machine and using it as a proxy for the network
connection. It expects a shell command string as an
argument.

See section 4.16.1 for more information on this, and on

other proxy settings. In particular, note that since the
special sequences described there are understood in the
argument string, literal backslashes must be doubled (if you
want \ in your command, you must put \\ on the command
line).
3.8.3.25 -restrict-acl: restrict the
Windows process ACL
This option (on Windows only) causes PuTTY (or another
PuTTY tool) to try to lock down the operating system's
access control on its own process. If this succeeds, it should
present an extra obstacle to malware that has managed to
run under the same user id as the PuTTY process, by
preventing it from attaching to PuTTY using the same
interfaces debuggers use and either reading sensitive
information out of its memory or hijacking its network
session.

This option is not enabled by default, because this form of

interaction between Windows programs has many legitimate
uses, including accessibility software such as screen
readers. Also, it cannot provide full security against this
class of attack in any case, because PuTTY can only lock
down its own ACL after it has started up, and malware could
still get in if it attacks the process between startup and
lockdown. So it trades away noticeable convenience, and
delivers less real security than you might want. However, if
you do want to make that tradeoff anyway, the option is
available.

A PuTTY process started with -restrict-acl will pass that on

to any processes started with Duplicate Session, New
Session etc. (However, if you're invoking PuTTY tools
explicitly, for instance as a proxy command, you'll need to
arrange to pass them the -restrict-acl option yourself, if
that's what you want.)

If Pageant is started with the -restrict-acl option, and you

use it to launch a PuTTY session from its System Tray
submenu, then Pageant will not default to starting the
PuTTY subprocess with a restricted ACL. This is because
PuTTY is more likely to suffer reduced functionality as a
result of restricted ACLs (e.g. screen reader software will
have a greater need to interact with it), whereas Pageant
stores the more critical information (hence benefits more
from the extra protection), so it's reasonable to want to run
Pageant but not PuTTY with the ACL restrictions. You can
force Pageant to start subsidiary PuTTY processes with a
restricted ACL if you also pass the -restrict-putty-acl option.
Chapter 4: Configuring PuTTY
This chapter describes all the configuration options in PuTTY.

PuTTY is configured using the control panel that comes up

before you start a session. Some options can also be
changed in the middle of a session, by selecting ‘Change
Settings’ from the window menu.

4.1 The Session panel

4.1.1 The host name section
4.1.2 Loading and storing saved sessions
4.1.3 ‘Close window on exit’
4.2 The Logging panel
4.2.1 ‘Log file name’
4.2.2 ‘What to do if the log file already exists’
4.2.3 ‘Flush log file frequently’
4.2.4 ‘Include header’
4.2.5 Options specific to SSH packet logging
4.3 The Terminal panel
4.3.1 ‘Auto wrap mode initially on’
4.3.2 ‘DEC Origin Mode initially on’
4.3.3 ‘Implicit CR in every LF’
4.3.4 ‘Implicit LF in every CR’
4.3.5 ‘Use background colour to erase screen’
4.3.6 ‘Enable blinking text’
4.3.7 ‘Answerback to ^E’
4.3.8 ‘Local echo’
4.3.9 ‘Local line editing’
4.3.10 Remote-controlled printing
4.4 The Keyboard panel
4.4.1 Changing the action of the Backspace key
4.4.2 Changing the action of the Home and End
keys
 4.4.3 Changing the action of the function keys and
keypad
4.4.4 Controlling Application Cursor Keys mode
4.4.5 Controlling Application Keypad mode
4.4.6 Using NetHack keypad mode
4.4.7 Enabling a DEC-like Compose key
4.4.8 ‘Control-Alt is different from AltGr’
4.5 The Bell panel
4.5.1 ‘Set the style of bell’
4.5.2 ‘Taskbar/caption indication on bell’
4.5.3 ‘Control the bell overload behaviour’
4.6 The Features panel
4.6.1 Disabling application keypad and cursor keys
4.6.2 Disabling xterm-style mouse reporting
4.6.3 Disabling remote terminal resizing
4.6.4 Disabling switching to the alternate screen
4.6.5 Disabling remote window title changing
4.6.6 Response to remote window title querying
4.6.7 Disabling remote scrollback clearing
4.6.8 Disabling destructive backspace
4.6.9 Disabling remote character set configuration
4.6.10 Disabling Arabic text shaping
4.6.11 Disabling bidirectional text display
4.7 The Window panel
4.7.1 Setting the size of the PuTTY window
4.7.2 What to do when the window is resized
4.7.3 Controlling scrollback
4.7.4 ‘Push erased text into scrollback’
4.8 The Appearance panel
4.8.1 Controlling the appearance of the cursor
4.8.2 Controlling the font used in the terminal
window
4.8.3 ‘Hide mouse pointer when typing in window’
4.8.4 Controlling the window border
4.9 The Behaviour panel
 4.9.1 Controlling the window title
4.9.2 ‘Warn before closing window’
4.9.3 ‘Window closes on ALT-F4’
4.9.4 ‘System menu appears on ALT-Space’
4.9.5 ‘System menu appears on Alt alone’
4.9.6 ‘Ensure window is always on top’
4.9.7 ‘Full screen on Alt-Enter’
4.10 The Translation panel
4.10.1 Controlling character set translation
4.10.2 ‘Treat CJK ambiguous characters as wide’
4.10.3 ‘Caps Lock acts as Cyrillic switch’
4.10.4 Controlling display of line-drawing characters
4.10.5 Controlling copy and paste of line drawing
characters
4.10.6 Combining VT100 line-drawing with UTF-8
4.11 The Selection panel
4.11.1 Changing the actions of the mouse buttons
4.11.2 ‘Shift overrides application's use of mouse’
4.11.3 Default selection mode
4.11.4 Assigning copy and paste actions to
clipboards
4.11.5 ‘Permit control characters in pasted text’
4.12 The Copy panel
4.12.1 Character classes
4.12.2 Copying in Rich Text Format
4.13 The Colours panel
4.13.1 ‘Allow terminal to specify ANSI colours’
4.13.2 ‘Allow terminal to use xterm 256-colour
mode’
4.13.3 ‘Allow terminal to use 24-bit colour’
4.13.4 ‘Indicate bolded text by changing...’
4.13.5 ‘Attempt to use logical palettes’
4.13.6 ‘Use system colours’
4.13.7 Adjusting the colours in the terminal window
4.14 The Connection panel
4.14.1 Using keepalives to prevent disconnection
 4.14.2 ‘Disable Nagle's algorithm’
4.14.3 ‘Enable TCP keepalives’
4.14.4 ‘Internet protocol version’
4.14.5 ‘Logical name of remote host’
4.15 The Data panel
4.15.1 ‘Auto-login username’
4.15.2 Use of system username
4.15.3 ‘Terminal-type string’
4.15.4 ‘Terminal speeds’
4.15.5 Setting environment variables on the server
4.16 The Proxy panel
4.16.1 Setting the proxy type
4.16.2 Excluding parts of the network from proxying
4.16.3 Name resolution when using a proxy
4.16.4 Username and password
4.16.5 Specifying the Telnet or Local proxy
command
4.16.6 Controlling proxy logging
4.17 The Telnet panel
4.17.1 ‘Handling of OLD_ENVIRON ambiguity’
4.17.2 Passive and active Telnet negotiation modes
4.17.3 ‘Keyboard sends Telnet special commands’
4.17.4 ‘Return key sends Telnet New Line instead of
^M’
4.18 The Rlogin panel
4.18.1 ‘Local username’
4.19 The SSH panel
4.19.1 Executing a specific command on the server
4.19.2 ‘Don't start a shell or command at all’
4.19.3 ‘Enable compression’
4.19.4 ‘SSH protocol version’
4.19.5 Sharing an SSH connection between PuTTY
tools
4.20 The Kex panel
4.20.1 Key exchange algorithm selection
4.20.2 Repeat key exchange
4.21 The Host Keys panel
4.21.1 Host key type selection
4.21.2 Manually configuring host keys
4.22 The Cipher panel
4.23 The Auth panel
4.23.1 ‘Display pre-authentication banner’
4.23.2 ‘Bypass authentication entirely’
4.23.3 ‘Attempt authentication using Pageant’
4.23.4 ‘Attempt TIS or CryptoCard authentication’
4.23.5 ‘Attempt keyboard-interactive authentication’
4.23.6 ‘Allow agent forwarding’
4.23.7 ‘Allow attempted changes of username in
SSH-2’
4.23.8 ‘Private key file for authentication’
4.24 The GSSAPI panel
4.24.1 ‘Allow GSSAPI credential delegation’
4.24.2 Preference order for GSSAPI libraries
4.25 The TTY panel
4.25.1 ‘Don't allocate a pseudo-terminal’
4.25.2 Sending terminal modes
4.26 The X11 panel
4.26.1 Remote X11 authentication
4.26.2 X authority file for local display
4.27 The Tunnels panel
4.27.1 Controlling the visibility of forwarded ports
4.27.2 Selecting Internet protocol version for
forwarded ports
4.28 The Bugs and More Bugs panels
4.28.1 ‘Chokes on SSH-2 ignore messages’
4.28.2 ‘Handles SSH-2 key re-exchange badly’
4.28.3 ‘Chokes on PuTTY's SSH-2 ‘winadj’ requests’
4.28.4 ‘Replies to requests on closed channels’
4.28.5 ‘Ignores SSH-2 maximum packet size’
4.28.6 ‘Requires padding on SSH-2 RSA signatures’
4.28.7 ‘Only supports pre-RFC4419 SSH-2 DH GEX’
 4.28.8 ‘Miscomputes SSH-2 HMAC keys’
4.28.9 ‘Misuses the session ID in SSH-2 PK auth’
4.28.10 ‘Miscomputes SSH-2 encryption keys’
4.28.11 ‘Chokes on SSH-1 ignore messages’
4.28.12 ‘Refuses all SSH-1 password camouflage’
4.28.13 ‘Chokes on SSH-1 RSA authentication’
4.29 The Serial panel
4.29.1 Selecting a serial line to connect to
4.29.2 Selecting the speed of your serial line
4.29.3 Selecting the number of data bits
4.29.4 Selecting the number of stop bits
4.29.5 Selecting the serial parity checking scheme
4.29.6 Selecting the serial flow control scheme
4.30 Storing configuration in a file
4.1 The Session panel
The Session configuration panel contains the basic options
you need to specify in order to open a session at all, and
also allows you to save your settings to be reloaded later.

4.1.1 The host name section

4.1.2 Loading and storing saved sessions
4.1.3 ‘Close window on exit’
4.1.1 The host name section
The top box on the Session panel, labelled ‘Specify your
connection by host name’, contains the details that need to
be filled in before PuTTY can open a session at all.

The ‘Host Name’ box is where you type the name, or

the IP address, of the server you want to connect to.
The ‘Connection type’ radio buttons let you choose what
type of connection you want to make: a raw connection,
a Telnet connection, an Rlogin connection, an SSH
connection, or a connection to a local serial line. (See
section 1.2 for a summary of the differences between
SSH, Telnet and rlogin; see section 3.6 for an
explanation of ‘raw’ connections; see section 3.7 for
information about using a serial line.)
The ‘Port’ box lets you specify which port number on the
server to connect to. If you select Telnet, Rlogin, or
SSH, this box will be filled in automatically to the usual
value, and you will only need to change it if you have an
unusual server. If you select Raw mode, you will almost
certainly need to fill in the ‘Port’ box yourself.

If you select ‘Serial’ from the ‘Connection type’ radio

buttons, the ‘Host Name’ and ‘Port’ boxes are replaced by
‘Serial line’ and ‘Speed’; see section 4.29 for more details of
these.
4.1.2 Loading and storing saved
sessions
The next part of the Session configuration panel allows you
to save your preferred PuTTY options so they will appear
automatically the next time you start PuTTY. It also allows
you to create saved sessions, which contain a full set of
configuration options plus a host name and protocol. A
saved session contains all the information PuTTY needs to
start exactly the session you want.

To save your default settings: first set up the settings

the way you want them saved. Then come back to the
Session panel. Select the ‘Default Settings’ entry in the
saved sessions list, with a single click. Then press the
‘Save’ button.

If there is a specific host you want to store the details of

how to connect to, you should create a saved session, which
will be separate from the Default Settings.

To save a session: first go through the rest of the

configuration box setting up all the options you want.
Then come back to the Session panel. Enter a name for
the saved session in the ‘Saved Sessions’ input box.
(The server name is often a good choice for a saved
session name.) Then press the ‘Save’ button. Your
saved session name should now appear in the list box.

You can also save settings in mid-session, from the

‘Change Settings’ dialog. Settings changed since the
start of the session will be saved with their current
values; as well as settings changed through the dialog,
this includes changes in window size, window title
changes sent by the server, and so on.
 To reload a saved session: single-click to select the
session name in the list box, and then press the ‘Load’
button. Your saved settings should all appear in the
configuration panel.
To modify a saved session: first load it as described
above. Then make the changes you want. Come back to
the Session panel, and press the ‘Save’ button. The new
settings will be saved over the top of the old ones.

To save the new settings under a different name, you

can enter the new name in the ‘Saved Sessions’ box, or
single-click to select a session name in the list box to
overwrite that session. To save ‘Default Settings’, you
must single-click the name before saving.

To start a saved session immediately: double-click on

the session name in the list box.
To delete a saved session: single-click to select the
session name in the list box, and then press the ‘Delete’
button.

Each saved session is independent of the Default Settings

configuration. If you change your preferences and update
Default Settings, you must also update every saved session
separately.

Saved sessions are stored in the Registry, at the location

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\SimonTatham\PuTTY\Sessions

If you need to store them in a file, you could try the method
described in section 4.30.
4.1.3 ‘Close window on exit’
Finally in the Session panel, there is an option labelled
‘Close window on exit’. This controls whether the PuTTY
terminal window disappears as soon as the session inside it
terminates. If you are likely to want to copy and paste text
out of the session after it has terminated, or restart the
session, you should arrange for this option to be off.

‘Close window on exit’ has three settings. ‘Always’ means

always close the window on exit; ‘Never’ means never close
on exit (always leave the window open, but inactive). The
third setting, and the default one, is ‘Only on clean exit’. In
this mode, a session which terminates normally will cause
its window to close, but one which is aborted unexpectedly
by network trouble or a confusing message from the server
will leave the window up.
4.2 The Logging panel
The Logging configuration panel allows you to save log files
of your PuTTY sessions, for debugging, analysis or future
reference.

The main option is a radio-button set that specifies whether

PuTTY will log anything at all. The options are:

‘None’. This is the default option; in this mode PuTTY

will not create a log file at all.
‘Printable output’. In this mode, a log file will be created
and written to, but only printable text will be saved into
it. The various terminal control codes that are typically
sent down an interactive session alongside the printable
text will be omitted. This might be a useful mode if you
want to read a log file in a text editor and hope to be
able to make sense of it.
‘All session output’. In this mode, everything sent by the
server into your terminal session is logged. If you view
the log file in a text editor, therefore, you may well find
it full of strange control characters. This is a particularly
useful mode if you are experiencing problems with
PuTTY's terminal handling: you can record everything
that went to the terminal, so that someone else can
replay the session later in slow motion and watch to see
what went wrong.
‘SSH packets’. In this mode (which is only used by SSH
connections), the SSH message packets sent over the
encrypted connection are written to the log file (as well
as Event Log entries). You might need this to debug a
network-level problem, or more likely to send to the
PuTTY authors as part of a bug report. BE WARNED that
if you log in using a password, the password can appear
in the log file; see section 4.2.5 for options that may
 help to remove sensitive material from the log file
before you send it to anyone else.
‘SSH packets and raw data’. In this mode, as well as the
decrypted packets (as in the previous mode), the raw
(encrypted, compressed, etc) packets are also logged.
This could be useful to diagnose corruption in transit.
(The same caveats as the previous mode apply, of
course.)

Note that the non-SSH logging options (‘Printable output’

and ‘All session output’) only work with PuTTY proper; in
programs without terminal emulation (such as Plink), they
will have no effect, even if enabled via saved settings.

4.2.1 ‘Log file name’

4.2.2 ‘What to do if the log file already exists’
4.2.3 ‘Flush log file frequently’
4.2.4 ‘Include header’
4.2.5 Options specific to SSH packet logging
4.2.5.1 ‘Omit known password fields’
4.2.5.2 ‘Omit session data’
4.2.1 ‘Log file name’
In this edit box you enter the name of the file you want to
log the session to. The ‘Browse’ button will let you look
around your file system to find the right place to put the
file; or if you already know exactly where you want it to go,
you can just type a pathname into the edit box.

There are a few special features in this box. If you use the &
character in the file name box, PuTTY will insert details of
the current session in the name of the file it actually opens.
The precise replacements it will do are:

&Y will be replaced by the current year, as four digits.

&M will be replaced by the current month, as two digits.
&D will be replaced by the current day of the month, as
two digits.
&T will be replaced by the current time, as six digits
(HHMMSS) with no punctuation.
&H will be replaced by the host name you are connecting
to.
&P will be replaced by the port number you are
connecting to on the target host.

For example, if you enter the host name c:\puttylogs\log-&h-

&y&m&d-&t.dat, you will end up with files looking like

log-server1.example.com-20010528-110859.dat
log-unixbox.somewhere.org-20010611-221001.dat
4.2.2 ‘What to do if the log file
already exists’
This control allows you to specify what PuTTY should do if it
tries to start writing to a log file and it finds the file already
exists. You might want to automatically destroy the existing
log file and start a new one with the same name.
Alternatively, you might want to open the existing log file
and add data to the end of it. Finally (the default option),
you might not want to have any automatic behaviour, but to
ask the user every time the problem comes up.
4.2.3 ‘Flush log file frequently’
This option allows you to control how frequently logged data
is flushed to disc. By default, PuTTY will flush data as soon
as it is displayed, so that if you view the log file while a
session is still open, it will be up to date; and if the client
system crashes, there's a greater chance that the data will
be preserved.

However, this can incur a performance penalty. If PuTTY is

running slowly with logging enabled, you could try
unchecking this option. Be warned that the log file may not
always be up to date as a result (although it will of course
be flushed when it is closed, for instance at the end of a
session).
4.2.4 ‘Include header’
This option allows you to choose whether to include a
header line with the date and time when the log file is
opened. It may be useful to disable this if the log file is
being used as realtime input to other programs that don't
expect the header line.
4.2.5 Options specific to SSH packet
logging
These options only apply if SSH packet data is being logged.

The following options allow particularly sensitive portions of

unencrypted packets to be automatically left out of the log
file. They are only intended to deter casual nosiness; an
attacker could glean a lot of useful information from even
these obfuscated logs (e.g., length of password).

4.2.5.1 ‘Omit known password fields’

4.2.5.2 ‘Omit session data’
4.2.5.1 ‘Omit known password fields’
When checked, decrypted password fields are removed from
the log of transmitted packets. (This includes any user
responses to challenge-response authentication methods
such as ‘keyboard-interactive’.) This does not include X11
authentication data if using X11 forwarding.

Note that this will only omit data that PuTTY knows to be a
password. However, if you start another login session within
your PuTTY session, for instance, any password used will
appear in the clear in the packet log. The next option may
be of use to protect against this.

This option is enabled by default.

4.2.5.2 ‘Omit session data’
When checked, all decrypted ‘session data’ is omitted; this
is defined as data in terminal sessions and in forwarded
channels (TCP, X11, and authentication agent). This will
usually substantially reduce the size of the resulting log file.

This option is disabled by default.

4.3 The Terminal panel
The Terminal configuration panel allows you to control the
behaviour of PuTTY's terminal emulation.

4.3.1 ‘Auto wrap mode initially on’

4.3.2 ‘DEC Origin Mode initially on’
4.3.3 ‘Implicit CR in every LF’
4.3.4 ‘Implicit LF in every CR’
4.3.5 ‘Use background colour to erase screen’
4.3.6 ‘Enable blinking text’
4.3.7 ‘Answerback to ^E’
4.3.8 ‘Local echo’
4.3.9 ‘Local line editing’
4.3.10 Remote-controlled printing
4.3.1 ‘Auto wrap mode initially on’
Auto wrap mode controls what happens when text printed in
a PuTTY window reaches the right-hand edge of the window.

With auto wrap mode on, if a long line of text reaches the
right-hand edge, it will wrap over on to the next line so you
can still see all the text. With auto wrap mode off, the
cursor will stay at the right-hand edge of the screen, and all
the characters in the line will be printed on top of each
other.

If you are running a full-screen application and you

occasionally find the screen scrolling up when it looks as if it
shouldn't, you could try turning this option off.

Auto wrap mode can be turned on and off by control

sequences sent by the server. This configuration option
controls the default state, which will be restored when you
reset the terminal (see section 3.1.3.6). However, if you
modify this option in mid-session using ‘Change Settings’, it
will take effect immediately.
4.3.2 ‘DEC Origin Mode initially on’
DEC Origin Mode is a minor option which controls how
PuTTY interprets cursor-position control sequences sent by
the server.

The server can send a control sequence that restricts the

scrolling region of the display. For example, in an editor, the
server might reserve a line at the top of the screen and a
line at the bottom, and might send a control sequence that
causes scrolling operations to affect only the remaining
lines.

With DEC Origin Mode on, cursor coordinates are counted

from the top of the scrolling region. With it turned off,
cursor coordinates are counted from the top of the whole
screen regardless of the scrolling region.

It is unlikely you would need to change this option, but if

you find a full-screen application is displaying pieces of text
in what looks like the wrong part of the screen, you could
try turning DEC Origin Mode on to see whether that helps.

DEC Origin Mode can be turned on and off by control

sequences sent by the server. This configuration option
controls the default state, which will be restored when you
reset the terminal (see section 3.1.3.6). However, if you
modify this option in mid-session using ‘Change Settings’, it
will take effect immediately.
4.3.3 ‘Implicit CR in every LF’
Most servers send two control characters, CR and LF, to
start a new line of the screen. The CR character makes the
cursor return to the left-hand side of the screen. The LF
character makes the cursor move one line down (and might
make the screen scroll).

Some servers only send LF, and expect the terminal to

move the cursor over to the left automatically. If you come
across a server that does this, you will see a stepped effect
on the screen, like this:
First line of text
Second line
Third line

If this happens to you, try enabling the ‘Implicit CR in every

LF’ option, and things might go back to normal:
First line of text
Second line
Third line
4.3.4 ‘Implicit LF in every CR’
Most servers send two control characters, CR and LF, to
start a new line of the screen. The CR character makes the
cursor return to the left-hand side of the screen. The LF
character makes the cursor move one line down (and might
make the screen scroll).

Some servers only send CR, and so the newly written line is
overwritten by the following line. This option causes a line
feed so that all lines are displayed.
4.3.5 ‘Use background colour to erase
screen’
Not all terminals agree on what colour to turn the screen
when the server sends a ‘clear screen’ sequence. Some
terminals believe the screen should always be cleared to the
default background colour. Others believe the screen should
be cleared to whatever the server has selected as a
background colour.

There exist applications that expect both kinds of behaviour.

Therefore, PuTTY can be configured to do either.

With this option disabled, screen clearing is always done in

the default background colour. With this option enabled, it is
done in the current background colour.

Background-colour erase can be turned on and off by

control sequences sent by the server. This configuration
option controls the default state, which will be restored
when you reset the terminal (see section 3.1.3.6). However,
if you modify this option in mid-session using ‘Change
Settings’, it will take effect immediately.
4.3.6 ‘Enable blinking text’
The server can ask PuTTY to display text that blinks on and
off. This is very distracting, so PuTTY allows you to turn
blinking text off completely.

When blinking text is disabled and the server attempts to

make some text blink, PuTTY will instead display the text
with a bolded background colour.

Blinking text can be turned on and off by control sequences

sent by the server. This configuration option controls the
default state, which will be restored when you reset the
terminal (see section 3.1.3.6). However, if you modify this
option in mid-session using ‘Change Settings’, it will take
effect immediately.
4.3.7 ‘Answerback to ^E’
This option controls what PuTTY will send back to the server
if the server sends it the ^E enquiry character. Normally it
just sends the string ‘PuTTY’.

If you accidentally write the contents of a binary file to your

terminal, you will probably find that it contains more than
one ^E character, and as a result your next command line
will probably read ‘PuTTYPuTTYPuTTY...’ as if you had typed
the answerback string multiple times at the keyboard. If
you set the answerback string to be empty, this problem
should go away, but doing so might cause other problems.

Note that this is not the feature of PuTTY which the server
will typically use to determine your terminal type. That
feature is the ‘Terminal-type string’ in the Connection panel;
see section 4.15.3 for details.

You can include control characters in the answerback string

using ^C notation. (Use ^~ to get a literal ^.)
4.3.8 ‘Local echo’
With local echo disabled, characters you type into the PuTTY
window are not echoed in the window by PuTTY. They are
simply sent to the server. (The server might choose to echo
them back to you; this can't be controlled from the PuTTY
control panel.)

Some types of session need local echo, and many do not. In

its default mode, PuTTY will automatically attempt to
deduce whether or not local echo is appropriate for the
session you are working in. If you find it has made the
wrong decision, you can use this configuration option to
override its choice: you can force local echo to be turned
on, or force it to be turned off, instead of relying on the
automatic detection.
4.3.9 ‘Local line editing’
Normally, every character you type into the PuTTY window
is sent immediately to the server the moment you type it.

If you enable local line editing, this changes. PuTTY will let
you edit a whole line at a time locally, and the line will only
be sent to the server when you press Return. If you make a
mistake, you can use the Backspace key to correct it before
you press Return, and the server will never see the mistake.

Since it is hard to edit a line locally without being able to

see it, local line editing is mostly used in conjunction with
local echo (section 4.3.8). This makes it ideal for use in raw
mode or when connecting to MUDs or talkers. (Although
some more advanced MUDs do occasionally turn local line
editing on and turn local echo off, in order to accept a
password from the user.)

Some types of session need local line editing, and many do

not. In its default mode, PuTTY will automatically attempt to
deduce whether or not local line editing is appropriate for
the session you are working in. If you find it has made the
wrong decision, you can use this configuration option to
override its choice: you can force local line editing to be
turned on, or force it to be turned off, instead of relying on
the automatic detection.
4.3.10 Remote-controlled printing
A lot of VT100-compatible terminals support printing under
control of the remote server (sometimes called ‘passthrough
printing’). PuTTY supports this feature as well, but it is
turned off by default.

To enable remote-controlled printing, choose a printer from

the ‘Printer to send ANSI printer output to’ drop-down list
box. This should allow you to select from all the printers you
have installed drivers for on your computer. Alternatively,
you can type the network name of a networked printer (for
example, \\printserver\printer1) even if you haven't already
installed a driver for it on your own machine.

When the remote server attempts to print some data,

PuTTY will send that data to the printer raw - without
translating it, attempting to format it, or doing anything
else to it. It is up to you to ensure your remote server
knows what type of printer it is talking to.

Since PuTTY sends data to the printer raw, it cannot offer

options such as portrait versus landscape, print quality, or
paper tray selection. All these things would be done by your
PC printer driver (which PuTTY bypasses); if you need them
done, you will have to find a way to configure your remote
server to do them.

To disable remote printing again, choose ‘None (printing

disabled)’ from the printer selection list. This is the default
state.
4.4 The Keyboard panel
The Keyboard configuration panel allows you to control the
behaviour of the keyboard in PuTTY. The correct state for
many of these settings depends on what the server to which
PuTTY is connecting expects. With a Unix server, this is
likely to depend on the termcap or terminfo entry it uses,
which in turn is likely to be controlled by the ‘Terminal-type
string’ setting in the Connection panel; see section 4.15.3
for details. If none of the settings here seems to help, you
may find question A.7.13 to be useful.

4.4.1 Changing the action of the Backspace key

4.4.2 Changing the action of the Home and End keys
4.4.3 Changing the action of the function keys and
keypad
4.4.4 Controlling Application Cursor Keys mode
4.4.5 Controlling Application Keypad mode
4.4.6 Using NetHack keypad mode
4.4.7 Enabling a DEC-like Compose key
4.4.8 ‘Control-Alt is different from AltGr’
4.4.1 Changing the action of the
Backspace key
Some terminals believe that the Backspace key should send
the same thing to the server as Control-H (ASCII code 8).
Other terminals believe that the Backspace key should send
ASCII code 127 (usually known as Control-?) so that it can
be distinguished from Control-H. This option allows you to
choose which code PuTTY generates when you press
Backspace.

If you are connecting over SSH, PuTTY by default tells the

server the value of this option (see section 4.25.2), so you
may find that the Backspace key does the right thing either
way. Similarly, if you are connecting to a Unix system, you
will probably find that the Unix stty command lets you
configure which the server expects to see, so again you
might not need to change which one PuTTY generates. On
other systems, the server's expectation might be fixed and
you might have no choice but to configure PuTTY.

If you do have the choice, we recommend configuring

PuTTY to generate Control-? and configuring the server to
expect it, because that allows applications such as emacs to
use Control-H for help.

(Typing Shift-Backspace will cause PuTTY to send whichever

code isn't configured here as the default.)
4.4.2 Changing the action of the
Home and End keys
The Unix terminal emulator rxvt disagrees with the rest of
the world about what character sequences should be sent to
the server by the Home and End keys.

xterm,and other terminals, send ESC [1~ for the Home key,
and ESC [4~ for the End key. rxvt sends ESC [H for the Home
key and ESC [Ow for the End key.

If you find an application on which the Home and End keys

aren't working, you could try switching this option to see if
it helps.
4.4.3 Changing the action of the
function keys and keypad
This option affects the function keys (F1 to F12) and the top
row of the numeric keypad.

In the default mode, labelled ESC [n~, the function keys

generate sequences like ESC [11~, ESC [12~ and so on.
This matches the general behaviour of Digital's
terminals.
In Linux mode, F6 to F12 behave just like the default
mode, but F1 to F5 generate ESC [[A through to ESC [[E.
This mimics the Linux virtual console.
In Xterm R6 mode, F5 to F12 behave like the default
mode, but F1 to F4 generate ESC OP through to ESC OS,
which are the sequences produced by the top row of the
keypad on Digital's terminals.
In VT400 mode, all the function keys behave like the
default mode, but the actual top row of the numeric
keypad generates ESC OP through to ESC OS.
In VT100+ mode, the function keys generate ESC OP
through to ESC O[
In SCO mode, the function keys F1 to F12 generate ESC
[M through to ESC [X. Together with shift, they generate
ESC [Y through to ESC [j. With control they generate ESC
[k through to ESC [v, and with shift and control together
they generate ESC [w through to ESC [{.

If you don't know what any of this means, you probably

don't need to fiddle with it.
4.4.4 Controlling Application Cursor
Keys mode
Application Cursor Keys mode is a way for the server to
change the control sequences sent by the arrow keys. In
normal mode, the arrow keys send ESC [A through to ESC [D.
In application mode, they send ESC OA through to ESC OD.

Application Cursor Keys mode can be turned on and off by

the server, depending on the application. PuTTY allows you
to configure the initial state.

You can also disable application cursor keys mode

completely, using the ‘Features’ configuration panel; see
section 4.6.1.
4.4.5 Controlling Application Keypad
mode
Application Keypad mode is a way for the server to change
the behaviour of the numeric keypad.

In normal mode, the keypad behaves like a normal

Windows keypad: with NumLock on, the number keys
generate numbers, and with NumLock off they act like the
arrow keys and Home, End etc.

In application mode, all the keypad keys send special

control sequences, including Num Lock. Num Lock stops
behaving like Num Lock and becomes another function key.

Depending on which version of Windows you run, you may

find the Num Lock light still flashes on and off every time
you press Num Lock, even when application mode is active
and Num Lock is acting like a function key. This is
unavoidable.

Application keypad mode can be turned on and off by the

server, depending on the application. PuTTY allows you to
configure the initial state.

You can also disable application keypad mode completely,

using the ‘Features’ configuration panel; see section 4.6.1.
4.4.6 Using NetHack keypad mode
PuTTY has a special mode for playing NetHack. You can
enable it by selecting ‘NetHack’ in the ‘Initial state of
numeric keypad’ control.

In this mode, the numeric keypad keys 1-9 generate the

NetHack movement commands (hjklyubn). The 5 key
generates the . command (do nothing).

In addition, pressing Shift or Ctrl with the keypad keys

generate the Shift- or Ctrl-keys you would expect (e.g.
keypad-7 generates ‘y’, so Shift-keypad-7 generates ‘Y’ and
Ctrl-keypad-7 generates Ctrl-Y); these commands tell
NetHack to keep moving you in the same direction until you
encounter something interesting.

For some reason, this feature only works properly when

Num Lock is on. We don't know why.
4.4.7 Enabling a DEC-like Compose
key
DEC terminals have a Compose key, which provides an
easy-to-remember way of typing accented characters. You
press Compose and then type two more characters. The two
characters are ‘combined’ to produce an accented character.
The choices of character are designed to be easy to
remember; for example, composing ‘e’ and ‘`’ produces the
‘è’ character.

If your keyboard has a Windows Application key, it acts as a

Compose key in PuTTY. Alternatively, if you enable the
‘AltGr acts as Compose key’ option, the AltGr key will
become a Compose key.
4.4.8 ‘Control-Alt is different from
AltGr’
Some old keyboards do not have an AltGr key, which can
make it difficult to type some characters. PuTTY can be
configured to treat the key combination Ctrl + Left Alt the
same way as the AltGr key.

By default, this checkbox is checked, and the key

combination Ctrl + Left Alt does something completely
different. PuTTY's usual handling of the left Alt key is to
prefix the Escape (Control-[) character to whatever
character sequence the rest of the keypress would
generate. For example, Alt-A generates Escape followed by
a. So Alt-Ctrl-A would generate Escape, followed by Control-
A.

If you uncheck this box, Ctrl-Alt will become a synonym for

AltGr, so you can use it to type extra graphic characters if
your keyboard has any.

(However, Ctrl-Alt will never act as a Compose key,

regardless of the setting of ‘AltGr acts as Compose key’
described in section 4.4.7.)
4.5 The Bell panel
The Bell panel controls the terminal bell feature: the
server's ability to cause PuTTY to beep at you.

In the default configuration, when the server sends the

character with ASCII code 7 (Control-G), PuTTY will play the
Windows Default Beep sound. This is not always what you
want the terminal bell feature to do; the Bell panel allows
you to configure alternative actions.

4.5.1 ‘Set the style of bell’

4.5.2 ‘Taskbar/caption indication on bell’
4.5.3 ‘Control the bell overload behaviour’
4.5.1 ‘Set the style of bell’
This control allows you to select various different actions to
occur on a terminal bell:

Selecting ‘None’ disables the bell completely. In this

mode, the server can send as many Control-G
characters as it likes and nothing at all will happen.
‘Make default system alert sound’ is the default setting.
It causes the Windows ‘Default Beep’ sound to be
played. To change what this sound is, or to test it if
nothing seems to be happening, use the Sound
configurer in the Windows Control Panel.
‘Visual bell’ is a silent alternative to a beeping computer.
In this mode, when the server sends a Control-G, the
whole PuTTY window will flash white for a fraction of a
second.
‘Beep using the PC speaker’ is self-explanatory.
‘Play a custom sound file’ allows you to specify a
particular sound file to be used by PuTTY alone, or even
by a particular individual PuTTY session. This allows you
to distinguish your PuTTY beeps from any other beeps
on the system. If you select this option, you will also
need to enter the name of your sound file in the edit
control ‘Custom sound file to play as a bell’.
4.5.2 ‘Taskbar/caption indication on
bell’
This feature controls what happens to the PuTTY window's
entry in the Windows Taskbar if a bell occurs while the
window does not have the input focus.

In the default state (‘Disabled’) nothing unusual happens.

If you select ‘Steady’, then when a bell occurs and the

window is not in focus, the window's Taskbar entry and its
title bar will change colour to let you know that PuTTY
session is asking for your attention. The change of colour
will persist until you select the window, so you can leave
several PuTTY windows minimised in your terminal, go away
from your keyboard, and be sure not to have missed any
important beeps when you get back.

‘Flashing’ is even more eye-catching: the Taskbar entry will

continuously flash on and off until you select the window.
4.5.3 ‘Control the bell overload
behaviour’
A common user error in a terminal session is to accidentally
run the Unix command cat (or equivalent) on an
inappropriate file type, such as an executable, image file, or
ZIP file. This produces a huge stream of non-text characters
sent to the terminal, which typically includes a lot of bell
characters. As a result of this the terminal often doesn't
stop beeping for ten minutes, and everybody else in the
office gets annoyed.

To try to avoid this behaviour, or any other cause of

excessive beeping, PuTTY includes a bell overload
management feature. In the default configuration, receiving
more than five bell characters in a two-second period will
cause the overload feature to activate. Once the overload
feature is active, further bells will have no effect at all, so
the rest of your binary file will be sent to the screen in
silence. After a period of five seconds during which no
further bells are received, the overload feature will turn
itself off again and bells will be re-enabled.

If you want this feature completely disabled, you can turn it

off using the checkbox ‘Bell is temporarily disabled when
over-used’.

Alternatively, if you like the bell overload feature but don't

agree with the settings, you can configure the details: how
many bells constitute an overload, how short a time period
they have to arrive in to do so, and how much silent time is
required before the overload feature will deactivate itself.

Bell overload mode is always deactivated by any keypress in

the terminal. This means it can respond to large unexpected
streams of data, but does not interfere with ordinary
command-line activities that generate beeps (such as
filename completion).
4.6 The Features panel
PuTTY's terminal emulation is very highly featured, and can
do a lot of things under remote server control. Some of
these features can cause problems due to buggy or
strangely configured server applications.

The Features configuration panel allows you to disable some

of PuTTY's more advanced terminal features, in case they
cause trouble.

4.6.1 Disabling application keypad and cursor keys

4.6.2 Disabling xterm-style mouse reporting
4.6.3 Disabling remote terminal resizing
4.6.4 Disabling switching to the alternate screen
4.6.5 Disabling remote window title changing
4.6.6 Response to remote window title querying
4.6.7 Disabling remote scrollback clearing
4.6.8 Disabling destructive backspace
4.6.9 Disabling remote character set configuration
4.6.10 Disabling Arabic text shaping
4.6.11 Disabling bidirectional text display
4.6.1 Disabling application keypad
and cursor keys
Application keypad mode (see section 4.4.5) and application
cursor keys mode (see section 4.4.4) alter the behaviour of
the keypad and cursor keys. Some applications enable
these modes but then do not deal correctly with the
modified keys. You can force these modes to be
permanently disabled no matter what the server tries to do.
4.6.2 Disabling xterm-style mouse
reporting
PuTTY allows the server to send control codes that let it
take over the mouse and use it for purposes other than
copy and paste. Applications which use this feature include
the text-mode web browser links, the Usenet newsreader
trn version 4, and the file manager mc (Midnight
Commander).

If you find this feature inconvenient, you can disable it

using the ‘Disable xterm-style mouse reporting’ control.
With this box ticked, the mouse will always do copy and
paste in the normal way.

Note that even if the application takes over the mouse, you
can still manage PuTTY's copy and paste by holding down
the Shift key while you select and paste, unless you have
deliberately turned this feature off (see section 4.11.2).
4.6.3 Disabling remote terminal
resizing
PuTTY has the ability to change the terminal's size and
position in response to commands from the server. If you
find PuTTY is doing this unexpectedly or inconveniently, you
can tell PuTTY not to respond to those server commands.
4.6.4 Disabling switching to the
alternate screen
Many terminals, including PuTTY, support an ‘alternate
screen’. This is the same size as the ordinary terminal
screen, but separate. Typically a screen-based program
such as a text editor might switch the terminal to the
alternate screen before starting up. Then at the end of the
run, it switches back to the primary screen, and you see the
screen contents just as they were before starting the editor.

Some people prefer this not to happen. If you want your

editor to run in the same screen as the rest of your terminal
activity, you can disable the alternate screen feature
completely.
4.6.5 Disabling remote window title
changing
PuTTY has the ability to change the window title in response
to commands from the server. If you find PuTTY is doing
this unexpectedly or inconveniently, you can tell PuTTY not
to respond to those server commands.
4.6.6 Response to remote window
title querying
PuTTY can optionally provide the xterm service of allowing
server applications to find out the local window title. This
feature is disabled by default, but you can turn it on if you
really want it.

NOTE that this feature is a potential security hazard. If a

malicious application can write data to your terminal (for
example, if you merely cat a file owned by someone else on
the server machine), it can change your window title
(unless you have disabled this as mentioned in section
4.6.5) and then use this service to have the new window
title sent back to the server as if typed at the keyboard.
This allows an attacker to fake keypresses and potentially
cause your server-side applications to do things you didn't
want. Therefore this feature is disabled by default, and we
recommend you do not set it to ‘Window title’ unless you
really know what you are doing.

There are three settings for this option:

‘None’
PuTTY makes no response whatsoever to the relevant
escape sequence. This may upset server-side software
that is expecting some sort of response.
‘Empty string’
PuTTY makes a well-formed response, but leaves it
blank. Thus, server-side software that expects a
response is kept happy, but an attacker cannot
influence the response string. This is probably the
setting you want if you have no better ideas.
‘Window title’
PuTTY responds with the actual window title. This is
dangerous for the reasons described above.
4.6.7 Disabling remote scrollback
clearing
PuTTY has the ability to clear the terminal's scrollback
buffer in response to a command from the server. If you
find PuTTY is doing this unexpectedly or inconveniently, you
can tell PuTTY not to respond to that server command.
4.6.8 Disabling destructive backspace
Normally, when PuTTY receives character 127 (^?) from the
server, it will perform a ‘destructive backspace’: move the
cursor one space left and delete the character under it. This
can apparently cause problems in some applications, so
PuTTY provides the ability to configure character 127 to
perform a normal backspace (without deleting a character)
instead.
4.6.9 Disabling remote character set
configuration
PuTTY has the ability to change its character set
configuration in response to commands from the server.
Some programs send these commands unexpectedly or
inconveniently. In particular, BitchX (an IRC client) seems to
have a habit of reconfiguring the character set to something
other than the user intended.

If you find that accented characters are not showing up the

way you expect them to, particularly if you're running
BitchX, you could try disabling the remote character set
configuration commands.
4.6.10 Disabling Arabic text shaping
PuTTY supports shaping of Arabic text, which means that if
your server sends text written in the basic Unicode Arabic
alphabet then it will convert it to the correct display forms
before printing it on the screen.

If you are using full-screen software which was not

expecting this to happen (especially if you are not an Arabic
speaker and you unexpectedly find yourself dealing with
Arabic text files in applications which are not Arabic-aware),
you might find that the display becomes corrupted. By
ticking this box, you can disable Arabic text shaping so that
PuTTY displays precisely the characters it is told to display.

You may also find you need to disable bidirectional text

display; see section 4.6.11.
4.6.11 Disabling bidirectional text
display
PuTTY supports bidirectional text display, which means that
if your server sends text written in a language which is
usually displayed from right to left (such as Arabic or
Hebrew) then PuTTY will automatically flip it round so that it
is displayed in the right direction on the screen.

If you are using full-screen software which was not

expecting this to happen (especially if you are not an Arabic
speaker and you unexpectedly find yourself dealing with
Arabic text files in applications which are not Arabic-aware),
you might find that the display becomes corrupted. By
ticking this box, you can disable bidirectional text display,
so that PuTTY displays text from left to right in all
situations.

You may also find you need to disable Arabic text shaping;
see section 4.6.10.
4.7 The Window panel
The Window configuration panel allows you to control
aspects of the PuTTY window.

4.7.1 Setting the size of the PuTTY window

4.7.2 What to do when the window is resized
4.7.3 Controlling scrollback
4.7.4 ‘Push erased text into scrollback’
4.7.1 Setting the size of the PuTTY
window
The ‘Columns’ and ‘Rows’ boxes let you set the PuTTY
window to a precise size. Of course you can also drag the
window to a new size while a session is running.
4.7.2 What to do when the window is
resized
These options allow you to control what happens when the
user tries to resize the PuTTY window using its window
furniture.

There are four options here:

‘Change the number of rows and columns’: the font size

will not change. (This is the default.)
‘Change the size of the font’: the number of rows and
columns in the terminal will stay the same, and the font
size will change.
‘Change font size when maximised’: when the window is
resized, the number of rows and columns will change,
except when the window is maximised (or restored),
when the font size will change. (In this mode, holding
down the Alt key while resizing will also cause the font
size to change.)
‘Forbid resizing completely’: the terminal will refuse to
be resized at all.
4.7.3 Controlling scrollback
These options let you configure the way PuTTY keeps text
after it scrolls off the top of the screen (see section 3.1.2).

The ‘Lines of scrollback’ box lets you configure how many

lines of text PuTTY keeps. The ‘Display scrollbar’ options
allow you to hide the scrollbar (although you can still view
the scrollback using the keyboard as described in section
3.1.2). You can separately configure whether the scrollbar is
shown in full-screen mode and in normal modes.

If you are viewing part of the scrollback when the server

sends more text to PuTTY, the screen will revert to showing
the current terminal contents. You can disable this
behaviour by turning off ‘Reset scrollback on display
activity’. You can also make the screen revert when you
press a key, by turning on ‘Reset scrollback on keypress’.
4.7.4 ‘Push erased text into
scrollback’
When this option is enabled, the contents of the terminal
screen will be pushed into the scrollback when a server-side
application clears the screen, so that your scrollback will
contain a better record of what was on your screen in the
past.

If the application switches to the alternate screen (see

section 4.6.4 for more about this), then the contents of the
primary screen will be visible in the scrollback until the
application switches back again.

This option is enabled by default.

4.8 The Appearance panel
The Appearance configuration panel allows you to control
aspects of the appearance of PuTTY's window.

4.8.1 Controlling the appearance of the cursor

4.8.2 Controlling the font used in the terminal window
4.8.3 ‘Hide mouse pointer when typing in window’
4.8.4 Controlling the window border
4.8.1 Controlling the appearance of
the cursor
The ‘Cursor appearance’ option lets you configure the cursor
to be a block, an underline, or a vertical line. A block cursor
becomes an empty box when the window loses focus; an
underline or a vertical line becomes dotted.

The ‘Cursor blinks’ option makes the cursor blink on and off.
This works in any of the cursor modes.
4.8.2 Controlling the font used in the
terminal window
This option allows you to choose what font, in what size, the
PuTTY terminal window uses to display the text in the
session.

By default, you will be offered a choice from all the fixed-

width fonts installed on the system, since VT100-style
terminal handling expects a fixed-width font. If you tick the
box marked ‘Allow selection of variable-pitch fonts’,
however, PuTTY will offer variable-width fonts as well: if you
select one of these, the font will be coerced into fixed-size
character cells, which will probably not look very good (but
can work OK with some fonts).
4.8.3 ‘Hide mouse pointer when
typing in window’
If you enable this option, the mouse pointer will disappear if
the PuTTY window is selected and you press a key. This
way, it will not obscure any of the text in the window while
you work in your session. As soon as you move the mouse,
the pointer will reappear.

This option is disabled by default, so the mouse pointer

remains visible at all times.
4.8.4 Controlling the window border
PuTTY allows you to configure the appearance of the
window border to some extent.

The checkbox marked ‘Sunken-edge border’ changes the

appearance of the window border to something more like a
DOS box: the inside edge of the border is highlighted as if it
sank down to meet the surface inside the window. This
makes the border a little bit thicker as well. It's hard to
describe well. Try it and see if you like it.

You can also configure a completely blank gap between the

text in the window and the border, using the ‘Gap between
text and window edge’ control. By default this is set at one
pixel. You can reduce it to zero, or increase it further.
4.9 The Behaviour panel
The Behaviour configuration panel allows you to control
aspects of the behaviour of PuTTY's window.

4.9.1 Controlling the window title

4.9.2 ‘Warn before closing window’
4.9.3 ‘Window closes on ALT-F4’
4.9.4 ‘System menu appears on ALT-Space’
4.9.5 ‘System menu appears on Alt alone’
4.9.6 ‘Ensure window is always on top’
4.9.7 ‘Full screen on Alt-Enter’
4.9.1 Controlling the window title
The ‘Window title’ edit box allows you to set the title of the
PuTTY window. By default the window title will contain the
host name followed by ‘PuTTY’, for example
server1.example.com - PuTTY. If you want a different window
title, this is where to set it.

PuTTY allows the server to send xterm control sequences

which modify the title of the window in mid-session (unless
this is disabled - see section 4.6.5); the title string set here
is therefore only the initial window title.

As well as the window title, there is also an xterm sequence

to modify the title of the window's icon. This makes sense in
a windowing system where the window becomes an icon
when minimised, such as Windows 3.1 or most X Window
System setups; but in the Windows 95-like user interface it
isn't as applicable.

By default, PuTTY only uses the server-supplied window

title, and ignores the icon title entirely. If for some reason
you want to see both titles, check the box marked ‘Separate
window and icon titles’. If you do this, PuTTY's window title
and Taskbar caption will change into the server-supplied
icon title if you minimise the PuTTY window, and change
back to the server-supplied window title if you restore it. (If
the server has not bothered to supply a window or icon title,
none of this will happen.)
4.9.2 ‘Warn before closing window’
If you press the Close button in a PuTTY window that
contains a running session, PuTTY will put up a warning
window asking if you really meant to close the window. A
window whose session has already terminated can always
be closed without a warning.

If you want to be able to close a window quickly, you can

disable the ‘Warn before closing window’ option.
4.9.3 ‘Window closes on ALT-F4’
By default, pressing ALT-F4 causes the window to close (or
a warning box to appear; see section 4.9.2). If you disable
the ‘Window closes on ALT-F4’ option, then pressing ALT-F4
will simply send a key sequence to the server.
4.9.4 ‘System menu appears on ALT-
Space’
If this option is enabled, then pressing ALT-Space will bring
up the PuTTY window's menu, like clicking on the top left
corner. If it is disabled, then pressing ALT-Space will just
send ESC SPACE to the server.

Some accessibility programs for Windows may need this

option enabling to be able to control PuTTY's window
successfully. For instance, Dragon NaturallySpeaking
requires it both to open the system menu via voice, and to
close, minimise, maximise and restore the window.
4.9.5 ‘System menu appears on Alt
alone’
If this option is enabled, then pressing and releasing ALT
will bring up the PuTTY window's menu, like clicking on the
top left corner. If it is disabled, then pressing and releasing
ALT will have no effect.
4.9.6 ‘Ensure window is always on
top’
If this option is enabled, the PuTTY window will stay on top
of all other windows.
4.9.7 ‘Full screen on Alt-Enter’
If this option is enabled, then pressing Alt-Enter will cause
the PuTTY window to become full-screen. Pressing Alt-Enter
again will restore the previous window size.

The full-screen feature is also available from the System

menu, even when it is configured not to be available on the
Alt-Enter key. See section 3.1.3.7.
4.10 The Translation panel
The Translation configuration panel allows you to control the
translation between the character set understood by the
server and the character set understood by PuTTY.

4.10.1 Controlling character set translation

4.10.2 ‘Treat CJK ambiguous characters as wide’
4.10.3 ‘Caps Lock acts as Cyrillic switch’
4.10.4 Controlling display of line-drawing characters
4.10.5 Controlling copy and paste of line drawing
characters
4.10.6 Combining VT100 line-drawing with UTF-8
4.10.1 Controlling character set
translation
During an interactive session, PuTTY receives a stream of 8-
bit bytes from the server, and in order to display them on
the screen it needs to know what character set to interpret
them in. Similarly, PuTTY needs to know how to translate
your keystrokes into the encoding the server expects.
Unfortunately, there is no satisfactory mechanism for PuTTY
and the server to communicate this information, so it must
usually be manually configured.

There are a lot of character sets to choose from. The

‘Remote character set’ option lets you select one.

By default PuTTY will use the UTF-8 encoding of Unicode,

which can represent pretty much any character; data
coming from the server is interpreted as UTF-8, and
keystrokes are sent UTF-8 encoded. This is what most
modern distributions of Linux will expect by default.
However, if this is wrong for your server, you can select a
different character set using this control.

A few other notable character sets are:

The ISO-8859 series are all standard character sets that

include various accented characters appropriate for
different sets of languages.
The Win125x series are defined by Microsoft, for similar
purposes. In particular Win1252 is almost equivalent to
ISO-8859-1, but contains a few extra characters such
as matched quotes and the Euro symbol.
If you want the old IBM PC character set with block
graphics and line-drawing characters, you can select
‘CP437’.
If you need support for a numeric code page which is not
listed in the drop-down list, such as code page 866, then
you can try entering its name manually (CP866 for example)
in the list box. If the underlying version of Windows has the
appropriate translation table installed, PuTTY will use it.
4.10.2 ‘Treat CJK ambiguous
characters as wide’
There are some Unicode characters whose width is not well-
defined. In most contexts, such characters should be
treated as single-width for the purposes of wrapping and so
on; however, in some CJK contexts, they are better treated
as double-width for historical reasons, and some server-side
applications may expect them to be displayed as such.
Setting this option will cause PuTTY to take the double-
width interpretation.

If you use legacy CJK applications, and you find your lines
are wrapping in the wrong places, or you are having other
display problems, you might want to play with this setting.

This option only has any effect in UTF-8 mode (see section
4.10.1).
4.10.3 ‘Caps Lock acts as Cyrillic
switch’
This feature allows you to switch between a US/UK
keyboard layout and a Cyrillic keyboard layout by using the
Caps Lock key, if you need to type (for example) Russian
and English side by side in the same document.

Currently this feature is not expected to work properly if

your native keyboard layout is not US or UK.
4.10.4 Controlling display of line-
drawing characters
VT100-series terminals allow the server to send control
sequences that shift temporarily into a separate character
set for drawing simple lines and boxes. However, there are
a variety of ways in which PuTTY can attempt to find
appropriate characters, and the right one to use depends on
the locally configured font. In general you should probably
try lots of options until you find one that your particular font
supports.

‘Use Unicode line drawing code points’ tries to use the

box characters that are present in Unicode. For good
Unicode-supporting fonts this is probably the most
reliable and functional option.
‘Poor man's line drawing’ assumes that the font cannot
generate the line and box characters at all, so it will use
the +, - and | characters to draw approximations to
boxes. You should use this option if none of the other
options works.
‘Font has XWindows encoding’ is for use with fonts that
have a special encoding, where the lowest 32 character
positions (below the ASCII printable range) contain the
line-drawing characters. This is unlikely to be the case
with any standard Windows font; it will probably only
apply to custom-built fonts or fonts that have been
automatically converted from the X Window System.
‘Use font in both ANSI and OEM modes’ tries to use the
same font in two different character sets, to obtain a
wider range of characters. This doesn't always work;
some fonts claim to be a different size depending on
which character set you try to use.
‘Use font in OEM mode only’ is more reliable than that,
but can miss out other characters from the main
character set.
4.10.5 Controlling copy and paste of
line drawing characters
By default, when you copy and paste a piece of the PuTTY
screen that contains VT100 line and box drawing characters,
PuTTY will paste them in the form they appear on the
screen: either Unicode line drawing code points, or the ‘poor
man's’ line-drawing characters +, - and |. The checkbox
‘Copy and paste VT100 line drawing chars as lqqqk’ disables
this feature, so line-drawing characters will be pasted as the
ASCII characters that were printed to produce them. This
will typically mean they come out mostly as q and x, with a
scattering of jklmntuvw at the corners. This might be useful if
you were trying to recreate the same box layout in another
program, for example.

Note that this option only applies to line-drawing characters

which were printed by using the VT100 mechanism. Line-
drawing characters that were received as Unicode code
points will paste as Unicode always.
4.10.6 Combining VT100 line-drawing
with UTF-8
If PuTTY is configured to treat data from the server as
encoded in UTF-8, then by default it disables the older
VT100-style system of control sequences that cause the
lower-case letters to be temporarily replaced by line
drawing characters.

The rationale is that in UTF-8 mode you don't need those

control sequences anyway, because all the line-drawing
characters they access are available as Unicode characters
already, so there's no need for applications to put the
terminal into a special state to get at them.

Also, it removes a risk of the terminal accidentally getting

into that state: if you accidentally write uncontrolled binary
data to a non-UTF-8 terminal, it can be surprisingly
common to find that your next shell prompt appears as a
sequence of line-drawing characters and then you have to
remember or look up how to get out of that mode. So by
default, UTF-8 mode simply doesn't have a confusing mode
like that to get into, accidentally or on purpose.

However, not all applications will see it that way. Even UTF-
8 terminal users will still sometimes have to run software
that tries to print line-drawing characters in the old-
fashioned way. So the configuration option ‘Enable VT100
line drawing even in UTF-8 mode’ puts PuTTY into a hybrid
mode in which it understands the VT100-style control
sequences that change the meaning of the ASCII lower case
letters, and understands UTF-8.
4.11 The Selection panel
The Selection panel allows you to control the way copy and
paste work in the PuTTY window.

4.11.1 Changing the actions of the mouse buttons

4.11.2 ‘Shift overrides application's use of mouse’
4.11.3 Default selection mode
4.11.4 Assigning copy and paste actions to clipboards
4.11.4.1 ‘Auto-copy selected text’
4.11.4.2 Choosing a clipboard for UI actions
4.11.5 ‘Permit control characters in pasted text’
4.11.1 Changing the actions of the
mouse buttons
PuTTY's copy and paste mechanism is by default modelled
on the Unix xterm application. The X Window System uses a
three-button mouse, and the convention in that system is
that the left button selects, the right button extends an
existing selection, and the middle button pastes.

Windows often only has two mouse buttons, so when run on

Windows, PuTTY is configurable. In PuTTY's default
configuration (‘Compromise’), the right button pastes, and
the middle button (if you have one) extends a selection.

If you have a three-button mouse and you are already used

to the xterm arrangement, you can select it using the ‘Action
of mouse buttons’ control.

Alternatively, with the ‘Windows’ option selected, the middle

button extends, and the right button brings up a context
menu (on which one of the options is ‘Paste’). (This context
menu is always available by holding down Ctrl and right-
clicking, regardless of the setting of this option.)

(When PuTTY iself is running on Unix, it follows the X

Window System convention.)
4.11.2 ‘Shift overrides application's
use of mouse’
PuTTY allows the server to send control codes that let it
take over the mouse and use it for purposes other than
copy and paste. Applications which use this feature include
the text-mode web browser links, the Usenet newsreader
trn version 4, and the file manager mc (Midnight
Commander).

When running one of these applications, pressing the mouse

buttons no longer performs copy and paste. If you do need
to copy and paste, you can still do so if you hold down Shift
while you do your mouse clicks.

However, it is possible in theory for applications to even

detect and make use of Shift + mouse clicks. We don't
know of any applications that do this, but in case someone
ever writes one, unchecking the ‘Shift overrides
application's use of mouse’ checkbox will cause Shift +
mouse clicks to go to the server as well (so that mouse-
driven copy and paste will be completely disabled).

If you want to prevent the application from taking over the

mouse at all, you can do this using the Features control
panel; see section 4.6.2.
4.11.3 Default selection mode
As described in section 3.1.1, PuTTY has two modes of
selecting text to be copied to the clipboard. In the default
mode (‘Normal’), dragging the mouse from point A to point
B selects to the end of the line containing A, all the lines in
between, and from the very beginning of the line containing
B. In the other mode (‘Rectangular block’), dragging the
mouse between two points defines a rectangle, and
everything within that rectangle is copied.

Normally, you have to hold down Alt while dragging the

mouse to select a rectangular block. Using the ‘Default
selection mode’ control, you can set rectangular selection as
the default, and then you have to hold down Alt to get the
normal behaviour.
4.11.4 Assigning copy and paste
actions to clipboards
Here you can configure which clipboard(s) are written or
read by PuTTY's various copy and paste actions.

Most platforms, including Windows, have a single system

clipboard. On these platforms, PuTTY provides a second
clipboard-like facility by permitting you to paste the text
you last selected in this window, whether or not it is
currently also in the system clipboard. This is not enabled
by default.

The X Window System (which underlies most Unix graphical

interfaces) provides multiple clipboards (or ‘selections’), and
many applications support more than one of them by a
different user interface mechanism. When PuTTY itself is
running on Unix, it has more configurability relating to these
selections.

The two most commonly used selections are called ‘PRIMARY’

and ‘CLIPBOARD’; in applications supporting both, the usual
behaviour is that PRIMARY is used by mouse-only actions
(selecting text automatically copies it to PRIMARY, and
middle-clicking pastes from PRIMARY), whereas CLIPBOARD is
used by explicit Copy and Paste menu items or keypresses
such as Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V.

4.11.4.1 ‘Auto-copy selected text’

4.11.4.2 Choosing a clipboard for UI actions
4.11.4.1 ‘Auto-copy selected text’
The checkbox ‘Auto-copy selected text to system clipboard’
controls whether or not selecting text in the PuTTY terminal
window automatically has the side effect of copying it to the
system clipboard, without requiring a separate user
interface action.

On X, the wording of this option is changed slightly so that

‘CLIPBOARD’ is mentioned in place of the ‘system clipboard’.
Text selected in the terminal window will always be
automatically placed in the PRIMARY selection, as is
conventional, but if you tick this box, it will also be placed in
‘CLIPBOARD’ at the same time.
4.11.4.2 Choosing a clipboard for UI
actions
PuTTY has three user-interface actions which can be
configured to paste into the terminal (not counting menu
items). You can click whichever mouse button (if any) is
configured to paste (see section 4.11.1); you can press
Shift-Ins; or you can press Ctrl-Shift-V, although that action
is not enabled by default.

You can configure which of the available clipboards each of

these actions pastes from (including turning the paste
action off completely). On platforms with a single system
clipboard (such as Windows), the available options are to
paste from that clipboard or to paste from PuTTY's internal
memory of the last selected text within that window. On X,
the standard options are CLIPBOARD or PRIMARY.

(PRIMARY is conceptually similar in that it also refers to the

last selected text – just across all applications instead of
just this window.)

The two keyboard options each come with a corresponding

key to copy to the same clipboard. Whatever you configure
Shift-Ins to paste from, Ctrl-Ins will copy to the same
location; similarly, Ctrl-Shift-C will copy to whatever Ctrl-
Shift-V pastes from.

On X, you can also enter a selection name of your choice.

For example, there is a rarely-used standard selection called
‘SECONDARY’, which Emacs (for example) can work with if you
hold down the Meta key while dragging to select or clicking
to paste; if you configure a PuTTY keyboard action to access
this clipboard, then you can interoperate with other
applications' use of it. Another thing you could do would be
to invent a clipboard name yourself, to create a special
clipboard shared only between instances of PuTTY, or
between just instances configured in that particular way.
4.11.5 ‘Permit control characters in
pasted text’
It is possible for the clipboard to contain not just text (with
newlines and tabs) but also control characters such as ESC
which could have surprising effects if pasted into a terminal
session, depending on what program is running on the
server side. Copying text from a mischievous web page
could put such characters onto the clipboard.

By default, PuTTY filters out the more unusual control

characters, only letting through the more obvious text-
formatting characters (newlines, tab, backspace, and DEL).

Setting this option stops this filtering; on paste, any

character on the clipboard is sent to the session
uncensored. This might be useful if you are deliberately
using control character pasting as a simple form of
scripting, for instance.
4.12 The Copy panel
The Copy configuration panel controls behaviour specifically
related to copying from the terminal window to the
clipboard.

4.12.1 Character classes

4.12.2 Copying in Rich Text Format
4.12.1 Character classes
PuTTY will select a word at a time in the terminal window if
you double-click to begin the drag. This section allows you
to control precisely what is considered to be a word.

Each character is given a class, which is a small number

(typically 0, 1 or 2). PuTTY considers a single word to be
any number of adjacent characters in the same class. So by
modifying the assignment of characters to classes, you can
modify the word-by-word selection behaviour.

In the default configuration, the character classes are:

Class 0 contains white space and control characters.

Class 1 contains most punctuation.
Class 2 contains letters, numbers and a few pieces of
punctuation (the double quote, minus sign, period,
forward slash and underscore).

So, for example, if you assign the @ symbol into character

class 2, you will be able to select an e-mail address with
just a double click.

In order to adjust these assignments, you start by selecting

a group of characters in the list box. Then enter a class
number in the edit box below, and press the ‘Set’ button.

This mechanism currently only covers ASCII characters,

because it isn't feasible to expand the list to cover the
whole of Unicode.

Character class definitions can be modified by control

sequences sent by the server. This configuration option
controls the default state, which will be restored when you
reset the terminal (see section 3.1.3.6). However, if you
modify this option in mid-session using ‘Change Settings’, it
will take effect immediately.
4.12.2 Copying in Rich Text Format
If you enable ‘Copy to clipboard in RTF as well as plain text’,
PuTTY will write formatting information to the clipboard as
well as the actual text you copy. The effect of this is that if
you paste into (say) a word processor, the text will appear
in the word processor in the same font, colour, and style
(e.g. bold, underline) PuTTY was using to display it.

This option can easily be inconvenient, so by default it is

disabled.
4.13 The Colours panel
The Colours panel allows you to control PuTTY's use of
colour.

4.13.1 ‘Allow terminal to specify ANSI colours’

4.13.2 ‘Allow terminal to use xterm 256-colour mode’
4.13.3 ‘Allow terminal to use 24-bit colour’
4.13.4 ‘Indicate bolded text by changing...’
4.13.5 ‘Attempt to use logical palettes’
4.13.6 ‘Use system colours’
4.13.7 Adjusting the colours in the terminal window
4.13.1 ‘Allow terminal to specify ANSI
colours’
This option is enabled by default. If it is disabled, PuTTY will
ignore any control sequences sent by the server to request
coloured text.

If you have a particularly garish application, you might want

to turn this option off and make PuTTY only use the default
foreground and background colours.
4.13.2 ‘Allow terminal to use xterm
256-colour mode’
This option is enabled by default. If it is disabled, PuTTY will
ignore any control sequences sent by the server which use
the extended 256-colour mode supported by recent
versions of xterm.

If you have an application which is supposed to use 256-

colour mode and it isn't working, you may find you need to
tell your server that your terminal supports 256 colours. On
Unix, you do this by ensuring that the setting of TERM
describes a 256-colour-capable terminal. You can check this
using a command such as infocmp:
$ infocmp | grep colors
colors#256, cols#80, it#8, lines#24, pairs#256,

If you do not see ‘colors#256’ in the output, you may need to

change your terminal setting. On modern Linux machines,
you could try ‘xterm-256color’.
4.13.3 ‘Allow terminal to use 24-bit
colour’
This option is enabled by default. If it is disabled, PuTTY will
ignore any control sequences sent by the server which use
the control sequences supported by modern terminals to
specify arbitrary 24-bit RGB colour value.
4.13.4 ‘Indicate bolded text by
changing...’
When the server sends a control sequence indicating that
some text should be displayed in bold, PuTTY can handle
this in several ways. It can either change the font for a bold
version, or use the same font in a brighter colour, or it can
do both (brighten the colour and embolden the font). This
control lets you choose which.

By default bold is indicated by colour, so non-bold text is

displayed in light grey and bold text is displayed in bright
white (and similarly in other colours). If you change the
setting to ‘The font’ box, bold and non-bold text will be
displayed in the same colour, and instead the font will
change to indicate the difference. If you select ‘Both’, the
font and the colour will both change.

Some applications rely on ‘bold black’ being distinguishable

from a black background; if you choose ‘The font’, their text
may become invisible.
4.13.5 ‘Attempt to use logical
palettes’
Logical palettes are a mechanism by which a Windows
application running on an 8-bit colour display can select
precisely the colours it wants instead of going with the
Windows standard defaults.

If you are not getting the colours you ask for on an 8-bit
display, you can try enabling this option. However, be
warned that it's never worked very well.
4.13.6 ‘Use system colours’
Enabling this option will cause PuTTY to ignore the
configured colours for ‘Default Background/Foreground’ and
‘Cursor Colour/Text’ (see section 4.13.7), instead going with
the system-wide defaults.

Note that non-bold and bold text will be the same colour if
this option is enabled. You might want to change to
indicating bold text by font changes (see section 4.13.4).
4.13.7 Adjusting the colours in the
terminal window
The main colour control allows you to specify exactly what
colours things should be displayed in. To modify one of the
PuTTY colours, use the list box to select which colour you
want to modify. The RGB values for that colour will appear
on the right-hand side of the list box. Now, if you press the
‘Modify’ button, you will be presented with a colour selector,
in which you can choose a new colour to go in place of the
old one. (You may also edit the RGB values directly in the
edit boxes, if you wish; each value is an integer from 0 to
255.)

PuTTY allows you to set the cursor colour, the default

foreground and background, and the precise shades of all
the ANSI configurable colours (black, red, green, yellow,
blue, magenta, cyan, and white). You can also modify the
precise shades used for the bold versions of these colours;
these are used to display bold text if you have chosen to
indicate that by colour (see section 4.13.4), and can also be
used if the server asks specifically to use them. (Note that
‘Default Bold Background’ is not the background colour used
for bold text; it is only used if the server specifically asks
for a bold background.)
4.14 The Connection panel
The Connection panel allows you to configure options that
apply to more than one type of connection.

4.14.1 Using keepalives to prevent disconnection

4.14.2 ‘Disable Nagle's algorithm’
4.14.3 ‘Enable TCP keepalives’
4.14.4 ‘Internet protocol version’
4.14.5 ‘Logical name of remote host’
4.14.1 Using keepalives to prevent
disconnection
If you find your sessions are closing unexpectedly (most
often with ‘Connection reset by peer’) after they have been
idle for a while, you might want to try using this option.

Some network routers and firewalls need to keep track of all

connections through them. Usually, these firewalls will
assume a connection is dead if no data is transferred in
either direction after a certain time interval. This can cause
PuTTY sessions to be unexpectedly closed by the firewall if
no traffic is seen in the session for some time.

The keepalive option (‘Seconds between keepalives’) allows

you to configure PuTTY to send data through the session at
regular intervals, in a way that does not disrupt the actual
terminal session. If you find your firewall is cutting idle
connections off, you can try entering a non-zero value in
this field. The value is measured in seconds; so, for
example, if your firewall cuts connections off after ten
minutes then you might want to enter 300 seconds (5
minutes) in the box.

Note that keepalives are not always helpful. They help if you
have a firewall which drops your connection after an idle
period; but if the network between you and the server
suffers from breaks in connectivity then keepalives can
actually make things worse. If a session is idle, and
connectivity is temporarily lost between the endpoints, but
the connectivity is restored before either side tries to send
anything, then there will be no problem - neither endpoint
will notice that anything was wrong. However, if one side
does send something during the break, it will repeatedly try
to re-send, and eventually give up and abandon the
connection. Then when connectivity is restored, the other
side will find that the first side doesn't believe there is an
open connection any more. Keepalives can make this sort of
problem worse, because they increase the probability that
PuTTY will attempt to send data during a break in
connectivity. (Other types of periodic network activity can
cause this behaviour; in particular, SSH-2 re-keys can have
this effect. See section 4.20.2.)

Therefore, you might find that keepalives help connection

loss, or you might find they make it worse, depending on
what kind of network problems you have between you and
the server.

Keepalives are only supported in Telnet and SSH; the Rlogin

and Raw protocols offer no way of implementing them. (For
an alternative, see section 4.14.3.)

Note that if you are using SSH-1 and the server has a bug
that makes it unable to deal with SSH-1 ignore messages
(see section 4.28.11), enabling keepalives will have no
effect.
4.14.2 ‘Disable Nagle's algorithm’
Nagle's algorithm is a detail of TCP/IP implementations that
tries to minimise the number of small data packets sent
down a network connection. With Nagle's algorithm
enabled, PuTTY's bandwidth usage will be slightly more
efficient; with it disabled, you may find you get a faster
response to your keystrokes when connecting to some types
of server.

The Nagle algorithm is disabled by default for interactive

connections.
4.14.3 ‘Enable TCP keepalives’
NOTE: TCP keepalives should not be confused with the
application-level keepalives described in section 4.14.1. If in
doubt, you probably want application-level keepalives; TCP
keepalives are provided for completeness.

The idea of TCP keepalives is similar to application-level

keepalives, and the same caveats apply. The main
differences are:

TCP keepalives are available on all connection types,

including Raw and Rlogin.
The interval between TCP keepalives is usually much
longer, typically two hours; this is set by the operating
system, and cannot be configured within PuTTY.
If the operating system does not receive a response to
a keepalive, it may send out more in quick succession
and terminate the connection if no response is received.

TCP keepalives may be more useful for ensuring that half-

open connections are terminated than for keeping a
connection alive.

TCP keepalives are disabled by default.

4.14.4 ‘Internet protocol version’
This option allows the user to select between the old and
new Internet protocols and addressing schemes (IPv4 and
IPv6). The selected protocol will be used for most outgoing
network connections (including connections to proxies);
however, tunnels have their own configuration, for which
see section 4.27.2.

The default setting is ‘Auto’, which means PuTTY will do

something sensible and try to guess which protocol you
wanted. (If you specify a literal Internet address, it will use
whichever protocol that address implies. If you provide a
hostname, it will see what kinds of address exist for that
hostname; it will use IPv6 if there is an IPv6 address
available, and fall back to IPv4 if not.)

If you need to force PuTTY to use a particular protocol, you

can explicitly set this to ‘IPv4’ or ‘IPv6’.
4.14.5 ‘Logical name of remote host’
This allows you to tell PuTTY that the host it will really end
up connecting to is different from where it thinks it is
making a network connection.

You might use this, for instance, if you had set up an SSH
port forwarding in one PuTTY session so that connections to
some arbitrary port (say, localhost port 10022) were
forwarded to a second machine's SSH port (say, foovax port
22), and then started a second PuTTY connecting to the
forwarded port.

In normal usage, the second PuTTY will access the host key
cache under the host name and port it actually connected to
(i.e. localhost port 10022 in this example). Using the logical
host name option, however, you can configure the second
PuTTY to cache the host key under the name of the host
you know that it's really going to end up talking to (here
foovax).

This can be useful if you expect to connect to the same

actual server through many different channels (perhaps
because your port forwarding arrangements keep
changing): by consistently setting the logical host name,
you can arrange that PuTTY will not keep asking you to
reconfirm its host key. Conversely, if you expect to use the
same local port number for port forwardings to lots of
different servers, you probably didn't want any particular
server's host key cached under that local port number. (For
this latter case, you could instead explicitly configure host
keys in the relevant sessions; see section 4.21.2.)

If you just enter a host name for this option, PuTTY will
cache the SSH host key under the default SSH port for that
host, irrespective of the port you really connected to (since
the typical scenario is like the above example: you connect
to a silly real port number and your connection ends up
forwarded to the normal port-22 SSH server of some other
machine). To override this, you can append a port number
to the logical host name, separated by a colon. E.g.
entering ‘foovax:2200’ as the logical host name will cause the
host key to be cached as if you had connected to port 2200
of foovax.

If you provide a host name using this option, it is also

displayed in other locations which contain the remote host
name, such as the default window title and the default SSH
password prompt. This reflects the fact that this is the host
you're really connecting to, which is more important than
the mere means you happen to be using to contact that
host. (This applies even if you're using a protocol other than
SSH.)
4.15 The Data panel
The Data panel allows you to configure various pieces of
data which can be sent to the server to affect your
connection at the far end.

Each option on this panel applies to more than one protocol.

Options which apply to only one protocol appear on that
protocol's configuration panels.

4.15.1 ‘Auto-login username’

4.15.2 Use of system username
4.15.3 ‘Terminal-type string’
4.15.4 ‘Terminal speeds’
4.15.5 Setting environment variables on the server
4.15.1 ‘Auto-login username’
All three of the SSH, Telnet and Rlogin protocols allow you
to specify what user name you want to log in as, without
having to type it explicitly every time. (Some Telnet servers
don't support this.)

In this box you can type that user name.

4.15.2 Use of system username
When the previous box (section 4.15.1) is left blank, by
default, PuTTY will prompt for a username at the time you
make a connection.

In some environments, such as the networks of large

organisations implementing single sign-on, a more sensible
default may be to use the name of the user logged in to the
local operating system (if any); this is particularly likely to
be useful with GSSAPI key exchange and user
authentication (see section 4.24 and section 4.20.1.1). This
control allows you to change the default behaviour.

The current system username is displayed in the dialog as a

convenience. It is not saved in the configuration; if a saved
session is later used by a different user, that user's name
will be used.
4.15.3 ‘Terminal-type string’
Most servers you might connect to with PuTTY are designed
to be connected to from lots of different types of terminal.
In order to send the right control sequences to each one,
the server will need to know what type of terminal it is
dealing with. Therefore, each of the SSH, Telnet and Rlogin
protocols allow a text string to be sent down the connection
describing the terminal. On a Unix server, this selects an
entry from the termcap or terminfo database that tells
applications what control sequences to send to the terminal,
and what character sequences to expect the keyboard to
generate.

PuTTY attempts to emulate the Unix xterm program, and by

default it reflects this by sending xterm as a terminal-type
string. If you find this is not doing what you want - perhaps
the remote system reports ‘Unknown terminal type’ - you
could try setting this to something different, such as vt220.

If you're not sure whether a problem is due to the terminal

type setting or not, you probably need to consult the
manual for your application or your server.
4.15.4 ‘Terminal speeds’
The Telnet, Rlogin, and SSH protocols allow the client to
specify terminal speeds to the server.

This parameter does not affect the actual speed of the

connection, which is always ‘as fast as possible’; it is just a
hint that is sometimes used by server software to modify its
behaviour. For instance, if a slow speed is indicated, the
server may switch to a less bandwidth-hungry display
mode.

The value is usually meaningless in a network environment,

but PuTTY lets you configure it, in case you find the server
is reacting badly to the default value.

The format is a pair of numbers separated by a comma, for

instance, 38400,38400. The first number represents the
output speed (from the server) in bits per second, and the
second is the input speed (to the server). (Only the first is
used in the Rlogin protocol.)

This option has no effect on Raw connections.

4.15.5 Setting environment variables
on the server
The Telnet protocol provides a means for the client to pass
environment variables to the server. Many Telnet servers
have stopped supporting this feature due to security flaws,
but PuTTY still supports it for the benefit of any servers
which have found other ways around the security problems
than just disabling the whole mechanism.

Version 2 of the SSH protocol also provides a similar

mechanism, which is easier to implement without security
flaws. Newer SSH-2 servers are more likely to support it
than older ones.

This configuration data is not used in the SSH-1, rlogin or

raw protocols.

To add an environment variable to the list transmitted down

the connection, you enter the variable name in the ‘Variable’
box, enter its value in the ‘Value’ box, and press the ‘Add’
button. To remove one from the list, select it in the list box
and press ‘Remove’.
4.16 The Proxy panel
The Proxy panel allows you to configure PuTTY to use
various types of proxy in order to make its network
connections. The settings in this panel affect the primary
network connection forming your PuTTY session, and also
any extra connections made as a result of SSH port
forwarding (see section 3.5).

Note that unlike some software (such as web browsers),

PuTTY does not attempt to automatically determine whether
to use a proxy and (if so) which one to use for a given
destination. If you need to use a proxy, it must always be
explicitly configured.

4.16.1 Setting the proxy type

4.16.2 Excluding parts of the network from proxying
4.16.3 Name resolution when using a proxy
4.16.4 Username and password
4.16.5 Specifying the Telnet or Local proxy command
4.16.6 Controlling proxy logging
4.16.1 Setting the proxy type
The ‘Proxy type’ radio buttons allow you to configure what
type of proxy you want PuTTY to use for its network
connections. The default setting is ‘None’; in this mode no
proxy is used for any connection.

Selecting ‘HTTP’ allows you to proxy your connections

through a web server supporting the HTTP CONNECT
command, as documented in RFC 2817.
Selecting ‘SOCKS 4’ or ‘SOCKS 5’ allows you to proxy
your connections through a SOCKS server.
Many firewalls implement a less formal type of proxy in
which a user can make a Telnet connection directly to
the firewall machine and enter a command such as
connect myhost.com 22 to connect through to an external
host. Selecting ‘Telnet’ allows you to tell PuTTY to use
this type of proxy.
Selecting ‘Local’ allows you to specify an arbitrary
command on the local machine to act as a proxy. When
the session is started, instead of creating a TCP
connection, PuTTY runs the command (specified in
section 4.16.5), and uses its standard input and output
streams.

This could be used, for instance, to talk to some kind of

network proxy that PuTTY does not natively support; or
you could tunnel a connection over something other
than TCP/IP entirely.

If you want your local proxy command to make a

secondary SSH connection to a proxy host and then
tunnel the primary connection over that, you might well
want the -nc command-line option in Plink. See section
3.8.3.14 for more information.
You can also enable this mode on the command line;
see section 3.8.3.24.
4.16.2 Excluding parts of the network
from proxying
Typically you will only need to use a proxy to connect to
non-local parts of your network; for example, your proxy
might be required for connections outside your company's
internal network. In the ‘Exclude Hosts/IPs’ box you can
enter ranges of IP addresses, or ranges of DNS names, for
which PuTTY will avoid using the proxy and make a direct
connection instead.

The ‘Exclude Hosts/IPs’ box may contain more than one

exclusion range, separated by commas. Each range can be
an IP address or a DNS name, with a * character allowing
wildcards. For example:
*.example.com

This excludes any host with a name ending in .example.com

from proxying.
192.168.88.*

This excludes any host with an IP address starting with

192.168.88 from proxying.
192.168.88.*,*.example.com

This excludes both of the above ranges at once.

Connections to the local host (the host name localhost, and

any loopback IP address) are never proxied, even if the
proxy exclude list does not explicitly contain them. It is very
unlikely that this behaviour would ever cause problems, but
if it does you can change it by enabling ‘Consider proxying
local host connections’.
Note that if you are doing DNS at the proxy (see section
4.16.3), you should make sure that your proxy exclusion
settings do not depend on knowing the IP address of a host.
If the name is passed on to the proxy without PuTTY looking
it up, it will never know the IP address and cannot check it
against your list.
4.16.3 Name resolution when using a
proxy
If you are using a proxy to access a private network, it can
make a difference whether DNS name resolution is
performed by PuTTY itself (on the client machine) or
performed by the proxy.

The ‘Do DNS name lookup at proxy end’ configuration

option allows you to control this. If you set it to ‘No’, PuTTY
will always do its own DNS, and will always pass an IP
address to the proxy. If you set it to ‘Yes’, PuTTY will always
pass host names straight to the proxy without trying to look
them up first.

If you set this option to ‘Auto’ (the default), PuTTY will do

something it considers appropriate for each type of proxy.
Telnet, HTTP, and SOCKS5 proxies will have host names
passed straight to them; SOCKS4 proxies will not.

Note that if you are doing DNS at the proxy, you should
make sure that your proxy exclusion settings (see section
4.16.2) do not depend on knowing the IP address of a host.
If the name is passed on to the proxy without PuTTY looking
it up, it will never know the IP address and cannot check it
against your list.

The original SOCKS 4 protocol does not support proxy-side

DNS. There is a protocol extension (SOCKS 4A) which does
support it, but not all SOCKS 4 servers provide this
extension. If you enable proxy DNS and your SOCKS 4
server cannot deal with it, this might be why.
4.16.4 Username and password
If your proxy requires authentication, you can enter a
username and a password in the ‘Username’ and ‘Password’
boxes.

Note that if you save your session, the proxy password will
be saved in plain text, so anyone who can access your
PuTTY configuration data will be able to discover it.

Authentication is not fully supported for all forms of proxy:

Username and password authentication is supported for

HTTP proxies and SOCKS 5 proxies.
With SOCKS 5, authentication is via CHAP if the
proxy supports it (this is not supported in
PuTTYtel); otherwise the password is sent to the
proxy in plain text.
With HTTP proxying, the only currently supported
authentication method is ‘basic’, where the
password is sent to the proxy in plain text.
SOCKS 4 can use the ‘Username’ field, but does not
support passwords.
You can specify a way to include a username and
password in the Telnet/Local proxy command (see
section 4.16.5).
4.16.5 Specifying the Telnet or Local
proxy command
If you are using the Telnet proxy type, the usual command
required by the firewall's Telnet server is connect, followed
by a host name and a port number. If your proxy needs a
different command, you can enter an alternative here.

If you are using the Local proxy type, the local command to
run is specified here.

In this string, you can use \n to represent a new-line, \r to

represent a carriage return, \t to represent a tab character,
and \x followed by two hex digits to represent any other
character. \\ is used to encode the \ character itself.

Also, the special strings %host and %port will be replaced by

the host name and port number you want to connect to.
The strings %user and %pass will be replaced by the proxy
username and password you specify. The strings %proxyhost
and %proxyport will be replaced by the host details specified
on the Proxy panel, if any (this is most likely to be useful
for the Local proxy type). To get a literal % sign, enter %%.

If a Telnet proxy server prompts for a username and

password before commands can be sent, you can use a
command such as:
%user\n%pass\nconnect %host %port\n

This will send your username and password as the first two
lines to the proxy, followed by a command to connect to the
desired host and port. Note that if you do not include the
%user or %pass tokens in the Telnet command, then the
‘Username’ and ‘Password’ configuration fields will be
ignored.
4.16.6 Controlling proxy logging
Often the proxy interaction has its own diagnostic output;
this is particularly the case for local proxy commands.

The setting ‘Print proxy diagnostics in the terminal window’

lets you control how much of the proxy's diagnostics are
printed to the main terminal window, along with output
from your main session.

By default (‘No’), proxy diagnostics are only sent to the

Event Log; with ‘Yes’ they are also printed to the terminal,
where they may get mixed up with your main session. ‘Only
until session starts’ is a compromise; proxy messages will
go to the terminal window until the main session is deemed
to have started (in a protocol-dependent way), which is
when they're most likely to be interesting; any further
proxy-related messages during the session will only go to
the Event Log.
4.17 The Telnet panel
The Telnet panel allows you to configure options that only
apply to Telnet sessions.

4.17.1 ‘Handling of OLD_ENVIRON ambiguity’

4.17.2 Passive and active Telnet negotiation modes
4.17.3 ‘Keyboard sends Telnet special commands’
4.17.4 ‘Return key sends Telnet New Line instead of ^M’
4.17.1 ‘Handling of OLD_ENVIRON
ambiguity’
The original Telnet mechanism for passing environment
variables was badly specified. At the time the standard (RFC
1408) was written, BSD telnet implementations were
already supporting the feature, and the intention of the
standard was to describe the behaviour the BSD
implementations were already using.

Sadly there was a typing error in the standard when it was

issued, and two vital function codes were specified the
wrong way round. BSD implementations did not change,
and the standard was not corrected. Therefore, it's possible
you might find either BSD or RFC-compliant
implementations out there. This switch allows you to choose
which one PuTTY claims to be.

The problem was solved by issuing a second standard,

defining a new Telnet mechanism called NEW_ENVIRON, which
behaved exactly like the original OLD_ENVIRON but was not
encumbered by existing implementations. Most Telnet
servers now support this, and it's unambiguous. This
feature should only be needed if you have trouble passing
environment variables to quite an old server.
4.17.2 Passive and active Telnet
negotiation modes
In a Telnet connection, there are two types of data passed
between the client and the server: actual text, and
negotiations about which Telnet extra features to use.

PuTTY can use two different strategies for negotiation:

In active mode, PuTTY starts to send negotiations as

soon as the connection is opened.
In passive mode, PuTTY will wait to negotiate until it
sees a negotiation from the server.

The obvious disadvantage of passive mode is that if the

server is also operating in a passive mode, then negotiation
will never begin at all. For this reason PuTTY defaults to
active mode.

However, sometimes passive mode is required in order to

successfully get through certain types of firewall and Telnet
proxy server. If you have confusing trouble with a firewall,
you could try enabling passive mode to see if it helps.
4.17.3 ‘Keyboard sends Telnet special
commands’
If this box is checked, several key sequences will have their
normal actions modified:

the Backspace key on the keyboard will send the Telnet

special backspace code;
Control-C will send the Telnet special Interrupt Process
code;
Control-Z will send the Telnet special Suspend Process
code.

You probably shouldn't enable this unless you know what

you're doing.
4.17.4 ‘Return key sends Telnet New
Line instead of ^M’
Unlike most other remote login protocols, the Telnet
protocol has a special ‘new line’ code that is not the same
as the usual line endings of Control-M or Control-J. By
default, PuTTY sends the Telnet New Line code when you
press Return, instead of sending Control-M as it does in
most other protocols.

Most Unix-style Telnet servers don't mind whether they

receive Telnet New Line or Control-M; some servers do
expect New Line, and some servers prefer to see ^M. If you
are seeing surprising behaviour when you press Return in a
Telnet session, you might try turning this option off to see if
it helps.
4.18 The Rlogin panel
The Rlogin panel allows you to configure options that only
apply to Rlogin sessions.

4.18.1 ‘Local username’

4.18.1 ‘Local username’
Rlogin allows an automated (password-free) form of login
by means of a file called .rhosts on the server. You put a line
in your .rhosts file saying something like
[email protected], and then when you make an Rlogin
connection the client transmits the username of the user
running the Rlogin client. The server checks the username
and hostname against .rhosts, and if they match it does not
ask for a password.

This only works because Unix systems contain a safeguard

to stop a user from pretending to be another user in an
Rlogin connection. Rlogin connections have to come from
port numbers below 1024, and Unix systems prohibit this to
unprivileged processes; so when the server sees a
connection from a low-numbered port, it assumes the client
end of the connection is held by a privileged (and therefore
trusted) process, so it believes the claim of who the user is.

Windows does not have this restriction: any user can

initiate an outgoing connection from a low-numbered port.
Hence, the Rlogin .rhosts mechanism is completely useless
for securely distinguishing several different users on a
Windows machine. If you have a .rhosts entry pointing at a
Windows PC, you should assume that anyone using that PC
can spoof your username in an Rlogin connection and
access your account on the server.

The ‘Local username’ control allows you to specify what

user name PuTTY should claim you have, in case it doesn't
match your Windows user name (or in case you didn't
bother to set up a Windows user name).
4.19 The SSH panel
The SSH panel allows you to configure options that only
apply to SSH sessions.

4.19.1 Executing a specific command on the server

4.19.2 ‘Don't start a shell or command at all’
4.19.3 ‘Enable compression’
4.19.4 ‘SSH protocol version’
4.19.5 Sharing an SSH connection between PuTTY tools
4.19.1 Executing a specific command
on the server
In SSH, you don't have to run a general shell session on the
server. Instead, you can choose to run a single specific
command (such as a mail user agent, for example). If you
want to do this, enter the command in the ‘Remote
command’ box.

Note that most servers will close the session after executing
the command.
4.19.2 ‘Don't start a shell or
command at all’
If you tick this box, PuTTY will not attempt to run a shell or
command after connecting to the remote server. You might
want to use this option if you are only using the SSH
connection for port forwarding, and your user account on
the server does not have the ability to run a shell.

This feature is only available in SSH protocol version 2

(since the version 1 protocol assumes you will always want
to run a shell).

This feature can also be enabled using the -N command-line

option; see section 3.8.3.13.

If you use this feature in Plink, you will not be able to

terminate the Plink process by any graceful means; the only
way to kill it will be by pressing Control-C or sending a kill
signal from another program.
4.19.3 ‘Enable compression’
This enables data compression in the SSH connection: data
sent by the server is compressed before sending, and
decompressed at the client end. Likewise, data sent by
PuTTY to the server is compressed first and the server
decompresses it at the other end. This can help make the
most of a low-bandwidth connection.
4.19.4 ‘SSH protocol version’
This allows you to select whether to use SSH protocol
version 2 or the older version 1.

You should normally leave this at the default of ‘2’. As well

as having fewer features, the older SSH-1 protocol is no
longer developed, has many known cryptographic
weaknesses, and is generally not considered to be secure.
PuTTY's protocol 1 implementation is provided mainly for
compatibility, and is no longer being enhanced.

If a server offers both versions, prefer ‘2’. If you have some

server or piece of equipment that only talks SSH-1, select
‘1’ here, and do not treat the resulting connection as
secure.

PuTTY will not automatically fall back to the other version of

the protocol if the server turns out not to match your
selection here; instead, it will put up an error message and
abort the connection. This prevents an active attacker
downgrading an intended SSH-2 connection to SSH-1.
4.19.5 Sharing an SSH connection
between PuTTY tools
The controls in this box allow you to configure PuTTY to
reuse an existing SSH connection, where possible.

The SSH-2 protocol permits you to run multiple data

channels over the same SSH connection, so that you can
log in just once (and do the expensive encryption setup just
once) and then have more than one terminal window open.

Each instance of PuTTY can still run at most one terminal

session, but using the controls in this box, you can
configure PuTTY to check if another instance of itself has
already connected to the target host, and if so, share that
instance's SSH connection instead of starting a separate
new one.

To enable this feature, just tick the box ‘Share SSH

connections if possible’. Then, whenever you start up a
PuTTY session connecting to a particular host, it will try to
reuse an existing SSH connection if one is available. For
example, selecting ‘Duplicate Session’ from the system
menu will launch another session on the same host, and if
sharing is enabled then it will reuse the existing SSH
connection.

When this mode is in use, the first PuTTY that connected to

a given server becomes the ‘upstream’, which means that it
is the one managing the real SSH connection. All
subsequent PuTTYs which reuse the connection are referred
to as ‘downstreams’: they do not connect to the real server
at all, but instead connect to the upstream PuTTY via local
inter-process communication methods.
For this system to be activated, both the upstream and
downstream instances of PuTTY must have the sharing
option enabled.

The upstream PuTTY can therefore not terminate until all its
downstreams have closed. This is similar to the effect you
get with port forwarding or X11 forwarding, in which a
PuTTY whose terminal session has already finished will still
remain open so as to keep serving forwarded connections.

In case you need to configure this system in more detail,

there are two additional checkboxes which allow you to
specify whether a particular PuTTY can act as an upstream
or a downstream or both. (These boxes only take effect if
the main ‘Share SSH connections if possible’ box is also
ticked.) By default both of these boxes are ticked, so that
multiple PuTTYs started from the same configuration will
designate one of themselves as the upstream and share a
single connection; but if for some reason you need a
particular PuTTY configuration not to be an upstream (e.g.
because you definitely need it to close promptly) or not to
be a downstream (e.g. because it needs to do its own
authentication using a special private key) then you can
untick one or the other of these boxes.

I have referred to ‘PuTTY’ throughout the above discussion,

but all the other PuTTY tools which make SSH connections
can use this mechanism too. For example, if PSCP or PSFTP
loads a configuration with sharing enabled, then it can act
as a downstream and use an existing SSH connection set up
by an instance of GUI PuTTY. The one special case is that
PSCP and PSFTP will never act as upstreams.

It is possible to test programmatically for the existence of a

live upstream using Plink. See section 7.2.3.4.
4.20 The Kex panel
The Kex panel (short for ‘key exchange’) allows you to
configure options related to SSH-2 key exchange.

Key exchange occurs at the start of an SSH connection (and

occasionally thereafter); it establishes a shared secret that
is used as the basis for all of SSH's security features. It is
therefore very important for the security of the connection
that the key exchange is secure.

Key exchange is a cryptographically intensive process; if

either the client or the server is a relatively slow machine,
the slower methods may take several tens of seconds to
complete.

If connection startup is too slow, or the connection hangs

periodically, you may want to try changing these settings.

If you don't understand what any of this means, it's safe to

leave these settings alone.

This entire panel is only relevant to SSH protocol version 2;

none of these settings affect SSH-1 at all.

4.20.1 Key exchange algorithm selection

4.20.1.1 GSSAPI-based key exchange
4.20.2 Repeat key exchange
4.20.1 Key exchange algorithm
selection
PuTTY supports a variety of SSH-2 key exchange methods,
and allows you to choose which one you prefer to use;
configuration is similar to cipher selection (see section
4.22).

PuTTY currently supports the following key exchange

methods:

‘ECDH’: elliptic curve Diffie-Hellman key exchange.

‘Group 14’: Diffie-Hellman key exchange with a well-
known 2048-bit group.
‘Group 1’: Diffie-Hellman key exchange with a well-
known 1024-bit group. We no longer recommend using
this method, and it's not used by default in new
installations; however, it may be the only method
supported by very old server software.
‘Group exchange’: with this method, instead of using a
fixed group, PuTTY requests that the server suggest a
group to use for key exchange; the server can avoid
groups known to be weak, and possibly invent new ones
over time, without any changes required to PuTTY's
configuration. We recommend use of this method
instead of the well-known groups, if possible.
‘RSA key exchange’: this requires much less
computational effort on the part of the client, and
somewhat less on the part of the server, than Diffie-
Hellman key exchange.
‘GSSAPI key exchange’: see section 4.20.1.1.

If the first algorithm PuTTY finds is below the ‘warn below

here’ line, you will see a warning box when you make the
connection, similar to that for cipher selection (see section
4.22).

4.20.1.1 GSSAPI-based key exchange

4.20.1.1 GSSAPI-based key exchange
PuTTY supports a set of key exchange methods that also
incorporates GSSAPI-based authentication. They are
enabled with the ‘Attempt GSSAPI key exchange’ checkbox
(which also appears on the ‘GSSAPI’ panel).

PuTTY can only perform the GSSAPI-authenticated key

exchange methods when using Kerberos V5, and not other
GSSAPI mechanisms. If the user running PuTTY has current
Kerberos V5 credentials, then PuTTY will select the GSSAPI
key exchange methods in preference to any of the ordinary
SSH key exchange methods configured in the preference
list.

The advantage of doing GSSAPI authentication as part of

the SSH key exchange is apparent when you are using
credential delegation (see section 4.24.1). The SSH key
exchange can be repeated later in the session, and this
allows your Kerberos V5 credentials (which are typically
short-lived) to be automatically re-delegated to the server
when they are refreshed on the client. (This feature is
commonly referred to as ‘cascading credentials’.)

If your server doesn't support GSSAPI key exchange, it may

still support GSSAPI in the SSH user authentication phase.
This will still let you log in using your Kerberos credentials,
but will only allow you to delegate the credentials that are
active at the beginning of the session; they can't be
refreshed automatically later, in a long-running session.

Another effect of GSSAPI key exchange is that it replaces

the usual SSH mechanism of permanent host keys
described in section 2.2. So if you use this method, then
you won't be asked any interactive questions about whether
to accept the server's host key. Instead, the Kerberos
exchange will verify the identity of the host you connect to,
at the same time as verifying your identity to it.
4.20.2 Repeat key exchange
If the session key negotiated at connection startup is used
too much or for too long, it may become feasible to mount
attacks against the SSH connection. Therefore, the SSH-2
protocol specifies that a new key exchange should take
place every so often; this can be initiated by either the
client or the server.

While this renegotiation is taking place, no data can pass

through the SSH connection, so it may appear to ‘freeze’.
(The occurrence of repeat key exchange is noted in the
Event Log; see section 3.1.3.1.) Usually the same algorithm
is used as at the start of the connection, with a similar
overhead.

These options control how often PuTTY will initiate a repeat

key exchange (‘rekey’). You can also force a key exchange
at any time from the Special Commands menu (see section
3.1.3.2).

‘Max minutes before rekey’ specifies the amount of time

that is allowed to elapse before a rekey is initiated. If
this is set to zero, PuTTY will not rekey due to elapsed
time. The SSH-2 protocol specification recommends a
timeout of at most 60 minutes.

You might have a need to disable time-based rekeys

completely for the same reasons that keepalives aren't
always helpful. If you anticipate suffering a network dropout
of several hours in the middle of an SSH connection, but
were not actually planning to send data down that
connection during those hours, then an attempted rekey in
the middle of the dropout will probably cause the
connection to be abandoned, whereas if rekeys are disabled
then the connection should in principle survive (in the
absence of interfering firewalls). See section 4.14.1 for
more discussion of these issues; for these purposes, rekeys
have much the same properties as keepalives. (Except that
rekeys have cryptographic value in themselves, so you
should bear that in mind when deciding whether to turn
them off.) Note, however, the the SSH server can still
initiate rekeys.

‘Minutes between GSSAPI checks’, if you're using

GSSAPI key exchange, specifies how often the GSSAPI
credential cache is checked to see whether new tickets
are available for delegation, or current ones are near
expiration. If forwarding of GSSAPI credentials is
enabled, PuTTY will try to rekey as necessary to keep
the delegated credentials from expiring. Frequent
checks are recommended; rekeying only happens when
needed.
‘Max data before rekey’ specifies the amount of data (in
bytes) that is permitted to flow in either direction before
a rekey is initiated. If this is set to zero, PuTTY will not
rekey due to transferred data. The SSH-2 protocol
specification recommends a limit of at most 1 gigabyte.

As well as specifying a value in bytes, the following

shorthand can be used:

‘1k’ specifies 1 kilobyte (1024 bytes).

‘1M’ specifies 1 megabyte (1024 kilobytes).
‘1G’ specifies 1 gigabyte (1024 megabytes).

Disabling data-based rekeys entirely is a bad idea. The

integrity, and to a lesser extent, confidentiality of the SSH-2
protocol depend in part on rekeys occurring before a 32-bit
packet sequence number wraps around. Unlike time-based
rekeys, data-based rekeys won't occur when the SSH
connection is idle, so they shouldn't cause the same
problems. The SSH-1 protocol, incidentally, has even
weaker integrity protection than SSH-2 without rekeys.
4.21 The Host Keys panel
The Host Keys panel allows you to configure options related
to SSH-2 host key management.

Host keys are used to prove the server's identity, and

assure you that the server is not being spoofed (either by a
man-in-the-middle attack or by completely replacing it on
the network). See section 2.2 for a basic introduction to
host keys.

This entire panel is only relevant to SSH protocol version 2;

none of these settings affect SSH-1 at all.

4.21.1 Host key type selection

4.21.2 Manually configuring host keys
4.21.1 Host key type selection
PuTTY supports a variety of SSH-2 host key types, and
allows you to choose which one you prefer to use to identify
the server. Configuration is similar to cipher selection (see
section 4.22).

PuTTY currently supports the following host key types:

‘Ed25519’: Edwards-curve DSA using a twisted Edwards

curve with modulus 2^255-19.
‘ECDSA’: elliptic curve DSA using one of the NIST-
standardised elliptic curves.
‘DSA’: straightforward DSA using modular
exponentiation.
‘RSA’: the ordinary RSA algorithm.

If PuTTY already has one or more host keys stored for the
server, it will prefer to use one of those, even if the server
has a key type that is higher in the preference order. You
can add such a key to PuTTY's cache from within an existing
session using the ‘Special Commands’ menu; see section
3.1.3.2.

Otherwise, PuTTY will choose a key type based purely on

the preference order you specify in the configuration.

If the first key type PuTTY finds is below the ‘warn below
here’ line, you will see a warning box when you make the
connection, similar to that for cipher selection (see section
4.22).
4.21.2 Manually configuring host keys
In some situations, if PuTTY's automated host key
management is not doing what you need, you might need
to manually configure PuTTY to accept a specific host key,
or one of a specific set of host keys.

One reason why you might want to do this is because the

host name PuTTY is connecting to is using round-robin DNS
to return one of multiple actual servers, and they all have
different host keys. In that situation, you might need to
configure PuTTY to accept any of a list of host keys for the
possible servers, while still rejecting any key not in that list.

Another reason is if PuTTY's automated host key

management is completely unavailable, e.g. because PuTTY
(or Plink or PSFTP, etc) is running in a Windows
environment without access to the Registry. In that
situation, you will probably want to use the -hostkey
command-line option to configure the expected host key(s);
see section 3.8.3.20.

For situations where PuTTY's automated host key

management simply picks the wrong host name to store a
key under, you may want to consider setting a ‘logical host
name’ instead; see section 4.14.5.

To configure manual host keys via the GUI, enter some text
describing the host key into the edit box in the ‘Manually
configure host keys for this connection’ container, and press
the ‘Add’ button. The text will appear in the ‘Host keys or
fingerprints to accept’ list box. You can remove keys again
with the ‘Remove’ button.
The text describing a host key can be in one of the following
formats:

An MD5-based host key fingerprint of the form

displayed in PuTTY's Event Log and host key dialog
boxes, i.e. sixteen 2-digit hex numbers separated by
colons.
A base64-encoded blob describing an SSH-2 public key
in OpenSSH's one-line public key format. How you
acquire a public key in this format is server-dependent;
on an OpenSSH server it can typically be found in a
location like /etc/ssh/ssh_host_rsa_key.pub.

If this box contains at least one host key or fingerprint

when PuTTY makes an SSH connection, then PuTTY's
automated host key management is completely bypassed:
the connection will be permitted if and only if the host key
presented by the server is one of the keys listed in this box,
and the host key store in the Registry will be neither read
nor written, unless you explicitly do so.

If the box is empty (as it usually is), then PuTTY's

automated host key management will work as normal.
4.22 The Cipher panel
PuTTY supports a variety of different encryption algorithms,
and allows you to choose which one you prefer to use. You
can do this by dragging the algorithms up and down in the
list box (or moving them using the Up and Down buttons) to
specify a preference order. When you make an SSH
connection, PuTTY will search down the list from the top
until it finds an algorithm supported by the server, and then
use that.

PuTTY currently supports the following algorithms:

ChaCha20-Poly1305, a combined cipher and MAC (SSH-

2 only)
AES (Rijndael) - 256, 192, or 128-bit SDCTR or CBC
(SSH-2 only)
Arcfour (RC4) - 256 or 128-bit stream cipher (SSH-2
only)
Blowfish - 256-bit SDCTR (SSH-2 only) or 128-bit CBC
Triple-DES - 168-bit SDCTR (SSH-2 only) or CBC
Single-DES - 56-bit CBC (see below for SSH-2)

If the algorithm PuTTY finds is below the ‘warn below here’

line, you will see a warning box when you make the
connection:
The first cipher supported by the server
is single-DES, which is below the configured
warning threshold.
Do you want to continue with this connection?

This warns you that the first available encryption is not a

very secure one. Typically you would put the ‘warn below
here’ line between the encryptions you consider secure and
the ones you consider substandard. By default, PuTTY
supplies a preference order intended to reflect a reasonable
preference in terms of security and speed.

In SSH-2, the encryption algorithm is negotiated

independently for each direction of the connection, although
PuTTY does not support separate configuration of the
preference orders. As a result you may get two warnings
similar to the one above, possibly with different
encryptions.

Single-DES is not recommended in the SSH-2 protocol

standards, but one or two server implementations do
support it. PuTTY can use single-DES to interoperate with
these servers if you enable the ‘Enable legacy use of single-
DES in SSH-2’ option; by default this is disabled and PuTTY
will stick to recommended ciphers.
4.23 The Auth panel
The Auth panel allows you to configure authentication
options for SSH sessions.

4.23.1 ‘Display pre-authentication banner’

4.23.2 ‘Bypass authentication entirely’
4.23.3 ‘Attempt authentication using Pageant’
4.23.4 ‘Attempt TIS or CryptoCard authentication’
4.23.5 ‘Attempt keyboard-interactive authentication’
4.23.6 ‘Allow agent forwarding’
4.23.7 ‘Allow attempted changes of username in SSH-2’
4.23.8 ‘Private key file for authentication’
4.23.1 ‘Display pre-authentication
banner’
SSH-2 servers can provide a message for clients to display
to the prospective user before the user logs in; this is
sometimes known as a pre-authentication ‘banner’. Typically
this is used to provide information about the server and
legal notices.

By default, PuTTY displays this message before prompting

for a password or similar credentials (although,
unfortunately, not before prompting for a login name, due
to the nature of the protocol design). By unchecking this
option, display of the banner can be suppressed entirely.
4.23.2 ‘Bypass authentication
entirely’
In SSH-2, it is in principle possible to establish a connection
without using SSH's mechanisms to identify or prove who
you are to the server. An SSH server could prefer to handle
authentication in the data channel, for instance, or simply
require no user authentication whatsoever.

By default, PuTTY assumes the server requires

authentication (we've never heard of one that doesn't), and
thus must start this process with a username. If you find
you are getting username prompts that you cannot answer,
you could try enabling this option. However, most SSH
servers will reject this.

This is not the option you want if you have a username and
just want PuTTY to remember it; for that see section 4.15.1.
It's also probably not what if you're trying to set up
passwordless login to a mainstream SSH server; depending
on the server, you probably wanted public-key
authentication (chapter 8) or perhaps GSSAPI
authentication (section 4.24). (These are still forms of
authentication, even if you don't have to interact with
them.)

This option only affects SSH-2 connections. SSH-1

connections always require an authentication step.
4.23.3 ‘Attempt authentication using
Pageant’
If this option is enabled, then PuTTY will look for Pageant
(the SSH private-key storage agent) and attempt to
authenticate with any suitable public keys Pageant currently
holds.

This behaviour is almost always desirable, and is therefore

enabled by default. In rare cases you might need to turn it
off in order to force authentication by some non-public-key
method such as passwords.

This option can also be controlled using the -noagent

command-line option. See section 3.8.3.9.

See chapter 9 for more information about Pageant in

general.
4.23.4 ‘Attempt TIS or CryptoCard
authentication’
TIS and CryptoCard authentication are (despite their
names) generic forms of simple challenge/response
authentication available in SSH protocol version 1 only. You
might use them if you were using S/Key one-time
passwords, for example, or if you had a physical security
token that generated responses to authentication
challenges. They can even be used to prompt for simple
passwords.

With this switch enabled, PuTTY will attempt these forms of

authentication if the server is willing to try them. You will be
presented with a challenge string (which may be different
every time) and must supply the correct response in order
to log in. If your server supports this, you should talk to
your system administrator about precisely what form these
challenges and responses take.
4.23.5 ‘Attempt keyboard-interactive
authentication’
The SSH-2 equivalent of TIS authentication is called
‘keyboard-interactive’. It is a flexible authentication method
using an arbitrary sequence of requests and responses; so
it is not only useful for challenge/response mechanisms
such as S/Key, but it can also be used for (for example)
asking the user for a new password when the old one has
expired.

PuTTY leaves this option enabled by default, but supplies a

switch to turn it off in case you should have trouble with it.
4.23.6 ‘Allow agent forwarding’
This option allows the SSH server to open forwarded
connections back to your local copy of Pageant. If you are
not running Pageant, this option will do nothing.

See chapter 9 for general information on Pageant, and

section 9.4 for information on agent forwarding. Note that
there is a security risk involved with enabling this option;
see section 9.5 for details.
4.23.7 ‘Allow attempted changes of
username in SSH-2’
In the SSH-1 protocol, it is impossible to change username
after failing to authenticate. So if you mis-type your
username at the PuTTY ‘login as:’ prompt, you will not be
able to change it except by restarting PuTTY.

The SSH-2 protocol does allow changes of username, in

principle, but does not make it mandatory for SSH-2 servers
to accept them. In particular, OpenSSH does not accept a
change of username; once you have sent one username, it
will reject attempts to try to authenticate as another user.
(Depending on the version of OpenSSH, it may quietly
return failure for all login attempts, or it may send an error
message.)

For this reason, PuTTY will by default not prompt you for
your username more than once, in case the server
complains. If you know your server can cope with it, you
can enable the ‘Allow attempted changes of username’
option to modify PuTTY's behaviour.
4.23.8 ‘Private key file for
authentication’
This box is where you enter the name of your private key
file if you are using public key authentication. See chapter 8
for information about public key authentication in SSH.

This key must be in PuTTY's native format (*.PPK). If you

have a private key in another format that you want to use
with PuTTY, see section 8.2.12.

You can use the authentication agent Pageant so that you

do not need to explicitly configure a key here; see chapter
9.

If a private key file is specified here with Pageant running,

PuTTY will first try asking Pageant to authenticate with that
key, and ignore any other keys Pageant may have. If that
fails, PuTTY will ask for a passphrase as normal. You can
also specify a public key file in this case (in RFC 4716 or
OpenSSH format), as that's sufficient to identify the key to
Pageant, but of course if Pageant isn't present PuTTY can't
fall back to using this file itself.
4.24 The GSSAPI panel
The ‘GSSAPI’ subpanel of the ‘Auth’ panel controls the use
of GSSAPI authentication. This is a mechanism which
delegates the authentication exchange to a library
elsewhere on the client machine, which in principle can
authenticate in many different ways but in practice is
usually used with the Kerberos single sign-on protocol to
implement passwordless login.

GSSAPI authentication is only available in the SSH-2

protocol.

PuTTY supports two forms of GSSAPI-based authentication.

In one of them, the SSH key exchange happens in the
normal way, and GSSAPI is only involved in authenticating
the user. The checkbox labelled ‘Attempt GSSAPI
authentication’ controls this form.

In the other method, GSSAPI-based authentication is

combined with the SSH key exchange phase. If this
succeeds, then the SSH authentication step has nothing left
to do. See section 4.20.1.1 for more information about this
method. The checkbox labelled ‘Attempt GSSAPI key
exchange’ controls this form. (The same checkbox appears
on the ‘Kex’ panel.)

If one or both of these controls is enabled, then GSSAPI

authentication will be attempted in one form or the other,
and (typically) if your client machine has valid Kerberos
credentials loaded, then PuTTY should be able to
authenticate automatically to servers that support Kerberos
logins.
If both of those checkboxes are disabled, PuTTY will not try
any form of GSSAPI at all, and the rest of this panel will be
unused.

4.24.1 ‘Allow GSSAPI credential delegation’

4.24.2 Preference order for GSSAPI libraries
4.24.1 ‘Allow GSSAPI credential
delegation’
GSSAPI credential delegation is a mechanism for passing on
your Kerberos (or other) identity to the session on the SSH
server. If you enable this option, then not only will PuTTY be
able to log in automatically to a server that accepts your
Kerberos credentials, but also you will be able to connect
out from that server to other Kerberos-supporting services
and use the same credentials just as automatically.

(This option is the Kerberos analogue of SSH agent

forwarding; see section 9.4 for some information on that.)

Note that, like SSH agent forwarding, there is a security

implication in the use of this option: the administrator of
the server you connect to, or anyone else who has cracked
the administrator account on that server, could fake your
identity when connecting to further Kerberos-supporting
services. However, Kerberos sites are typically run by a
central authority, so the administrator of one server is likely
to already have access to the other services too; so this
would typically be less of a risk than SSH agent forwarding.

If your connection is not using GSSAPI key exchange, it is

possible for the delegation to expire during your session.
See section 4.20.1.1 for more information.
4.24.2 Preference order for GSSAPI
libraries
GSSAPI is a mechanism which allows more than one
authentication method to be accessed through the same
interface. Therefore, more than one authentication library
may exist on your system which can be accessed using
GSSAPI.

PuTTY contains native support for a few well-known such

libraries (including Windows' SSPI), and will look for all of
them on your system and use whichever it finds. If more
than one exists on your system and you need to use a
specific one, you can adjust the order in which it will search
using this preference list control.

One of the options in the preference list is to use a user-

specified GSSAPI library. If the library you want to use is
not mentioned by name in PuTTY's list of options, you can
enter its full pathname in the ‘User-supplied GSSAPI library
path’ field, and move the ‘User-supplied GSSAPI library’
option in the preference list to make sure it is selected
before anything else.

On Windows, such libraries are files with a .dll extension,

and must have been built in the same way as the PuTTY
executable you're running; if you have a 32-bit DLL, you
must run a 32-bit version of PuTTY, and the same with 64-
bit (see question A.6.10). On Unix, shared libraries
generally have a .so extension.
4.25 The TTY panel
The TTY panel lets you configure the remote pseudo-
terminal.

4.25.1 ‘Don't allocate a pseudo-terminal’

4.25.2 Sending terminal modes
4.25.1 ‘Don't allocate a pseudo-
terminal’
When connecting to a Unix system, most interactive shell
sessions are run in a pseudo-terminal, which allows the
Unix system to pretend it's talking to a real physical
terminal device but allows the SSH server to catch all the
data coming from that fake device and send it back to the
client.

Occasionally you might find you have a need to run a

session not in a pseudo-terminal. In PuTTY, this is generally
only useful for very specialist purposes; although in Plink
(see chapter 7) it is the usual way of working.
4.25.2 Sending terminal modes
The SSH protocol allows the client to send ‘terminal modes’
for the remote pseudo-terminal. These usually control the
server's expectation of the local terminal's behaviour.

If your server does not have sensible defaults for these

modes, you may find that changing them here helps,
although the server is at liberty to ignore your changes. If
you don't understand any of this, it's safe to leave these
settings alone.

(None of these settings will have any effect if no pseudo-

terminal is requested or allocated.)

You can change what happens for a particular mode by

selecting it in the list, choosing one of the options and
specifying the exact value if necessary, and hitting ‘Set’. The
effect of the options is as follows:

If the ‘Auto’ option is selected, the PuTTY tools will

decide whether to specify that mode to the server, and
if so, will send a sensible value.

PuTTY proper will send modes that it has an opinion on

(currently only the code for the Backspace key, ERASE,
and whether the character set is UTF-8, IUTF8). Plink on
Unix will propagate appropriate modes from the local
terminal, if any.

If ‘Nothing’ is selected, no value for the mode will be

specified to the server under any circumstances.
If a value is specified, it will be sent to the server under
all circumstances. The precise syntax of the value box
depends on the mode.
By default, all of the available modes are listed as ‘Auto’,
which should do the right thing in most circumstances.

The precise effect of each setting, if any, is up to the server.

Their names come from POSIX and other Unix systems, and
they are most likely to have a useful effect on such
systems. (These are the same settings that can usually be
changed using the stty command once logged in to such
servers.)

Some notable modes are described below; for fuller

explanations, see your server documentation.

ERASEis the character that when typed by the user will

delete one space to the left. When set to ‘Auto’ (the
default setting), this follows the setting of the local
Backspace key in PuTTY (see section 4.4.1).

This and other special characters are specified using ^C

notation for Ctrl-C, and so on. Use ^<27> or ^<0x1B> to
specify a character numerically, and ^~ to get a literal ^.
Other non-control characters are denoted by
themselves. Leaving the box entirely blank indicates
that no character should be assigned to the specified
function, although this may not be supported by all
servers.

QUIT is a special character that usually forcefully ends

the current process on the server (SIGQUIT). On many
servers its default setting is Ctrl-backslash (^\), which is
easy to accidentally invoke on many keyboards. If this
is getting in your way, you may want to change it to
another character or turn it off entirely.
Boolean modes such as ECHO and ICANON can be specified
in PuTTY in a variety of ways, such as true/false, yes/no,
and 0/1. (Explicitly specifying a value of no is different
from not sending the mode at all.)
The boolean mode IUTF8 signals to the server whether
the terminal character set is UTF-8 or not, for purposes
such as basic line editing; if this is set incorrectly, the
backspace key may erase the wrong amount of text, for
instance. However, simply setting this is not usually
sufficient for the server to use UTF-8; POSIX servers
will generally also require the locale to be set (by some
server-dependent means), although many newer
installations default to UTF-8. Also, since this mode was
added to the SSH protocol much later than the others,
many servers (particularly older servers) do not honour
this mode sent over SSH; indeed, a few poorly-written
servers object to its mere presence, so you may find
you need to set it to not be sent at all. When set to
‘Auto’, this follows the local configured character set
(see section 4.10.1).
Terminal speeds are configured elsewhere; see section
4.15.4.
4.26 The X11 panel
The X11 panel allows you to configure forwarding of X11
over an SSH connection.

If your server lets you run X Window System graphical

applications, X11 forwarding allows you to securely give
those applications access to a local X display on your PC.

To enable X11 forwarding, check the ‘Enable X11

forwarding’ box. If your X display is somewhere unusual,
you will need to enter its location in the ‘X display location’
box; if this is left blank, PuTTY will try to find a sensible
default in the environment, or use the primary local display
(:0) if that fails.

See section 3.4 for more information about X11 forwarding.

4.26.1 Remote X11 authentication

4.26.2 X authority file for local display
4.26.1 Remote X11 authentication
If you are using X11 forwarding, the virtual X server created
on the SSH server machine will be protected by
authorisation data. This data is invented, and checked, by
PuTTY.

The usual authorisation method used for this is called MIT-

MAGIC-COOKIE-1. This is a simple password-style protocol: the
X client sends some cookie data to the server, and the
server checks that it matches the real cookie. The cookie
data is sent over an unencrypted X11 connection; so if you
allow a client on a third machine to access the virtual X
server, then the cookie will be sent in the clear.

PuTTY offers the alternative protocol XDM-AUTHORIZATION-1.

This is a cryptographically authenticated protocol: the data
sent by the X client is different every time, and it depends
on the IP address and port of the client's end of the
connection and is also stamped with the current time. So an
eavesdropper who captures an XDM-AUTHORIZATION-1 string
cannot immediately re-use it for their own X connection.

PuTTY's support for XDM-AUTHORIZATION-1 is a somewhat

experimental feature, and may encounter several problems:

Some X clients probably do not even support XDM-

AUTHORIZATION-1, so they will not know what to do with
the data PuTTY has provided.
This authentication mechanism will only work in SSH-2.
In SSH-1, the SSH server does not tell the client the
source address of a forwarded connection in a machine-
readable format, so it's impossible to verify the XDM-
AUTHORIZATION-1 data.
 You may find this feature causes problems with some
SSH servers, which will not clean up XDM-AUTHORIZATION-1
data after a session, so that if you then connect to the
same server using a client which only does MIT-MAGIC-
COOKIE-1 and are allocated the same remote display
number, you might find that out-of-date authentication
data is still present on your server and your X
connections fail.

PuTTY's default is MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1. If you change it, you

should be sure you know what you're doing.
4.26.2 X authority file for local
display
If you are using X11 forwarding, the local X server to which
your forwarded connections are eventually directed may
itself require authorisation.

Some Windows X servers do not require this: they do

authorisation by simpler means, such as accepting any
connection from the local machine but not from anywhere
else. However, if your X server does require authorisation,
then PuTTY needs to know what authorisation is required.

One way in which this data might be made available is for

the X server to store it somewhere in a file which has the
same format as the Unix .Xauthority file. If this is how your
Windows X server works, then you can tell PuTTY where to
find this file by configuring this option. By default, PuTTY
will not attempt to find any authorisation for your local
display.
4.27 The Tunnels panel
The Tunnels panel allows you to configure tunnelling of
arbitrary connection types through an SSH connection.

Port forwarding allows you to tunnel other types of network

connection down an SSH session. See section 3.5 for a
general discussion of port forwarding and how it works.

The port forwarding section in the Tunnels panel shows a

list of all the port forwardings that PuTTY will try to set up
when it connects to the server. By default no port
forwardings are set up, so this list is empty.

To add a port forwarding:

Set one of the ‘Local’ or ‘Remote’ radio buttons,

depending on whether you want to forward a local port
to a remote destination (‘Local’) or forward a remote
port to a local destination (‘Remote’). Alternatively,
select ‘Dynamic’ if you want PuTTY to provide a local
SOCKS 4/4A/5 proxy on a local port (note that this
proxy only supports TCP connections; the SSH protocol
does not support forwarding UDP).
Enter a source port number into the ‘Source port’ box.
For local forwardings, PuTTY will listen on this port of
your PC. For remote forwardings, your SSH server will
listen on this port of the remote machine. Note that
most servers will not allow you to listen on port
numbers less than 1024.
If you have selected ‘Local’ or ‘Remote’ (this step is not
needed with ‘Dynamic’), enter a hostname and port
number separated by a colon, in the ‘Destination’ box.
Connections received on the source port will be directed
to this destination. For example, to connect to a POP-3
 server, you might enter popserver.example.com:110. (If you
need to enter a literal IPv6 address, enclose it in square
brackets, for instance ‘[::1]:2200’.)
Click the ‘Add’ button. Your forwarding details should
appear in the list box.

To remove a port forwarding, simply select its details in the

list box, and click the ‘Remove’ button.

In the ‘Source port’ box, you can also optionally enter an IP

address to listen on, by specifying (for instance)
127.0.0.5:79. See section 3.5 for more information on how
this works and its restrictions.

In place of port numbers, you can enter service names, if

they are known to the local system. For instance, in the
‘Destination’ box, you could enter popserver.example.com:pop3.

You can modify the currently active set of port forwardings

in mid-session using ‘Change Settings’ (see section
3.1.3.4). If you delete a local or dynamic port forwarding in
mid-session, PuTTY will stop listening for connections on
that port, so it can be re-used by another program. If you
delete a remote port forwarding, note that:

The SSH-1 protocol contains no mechanism for asking

the server to stop listening on a remote port.
The SSH-2 protocol does contain such a mechanism,
but not all SSH servers support it. (In particular,
OpenSSH does not support it in any version earlier than
3.9.)

If you ask to delete a remote port forwarding and PuTTY

cannot make the server actually stop listening on the port,
it will instead just start refusing incoming connections on
that port. Therefore, although the port cannot be reused by
another program, you can at least be reasonably sure that
server-side programs can no longer access the service at
your end of the port forwarding.

If you delete a forwarding, any existing connections

established using that forwarding remain open. Similarly,
changes to global settings such as ‘Local ports accept
connections from other hosts’ only take effect on new
forwardings.

If the connection you are forwarding over SSH is itself a

second SSH connection made by another copy of PuTTY, you
might find the ‘logical host name’ configuration option
useful to warn PuTTY of which host key it should be
expecting. See section 4.14.5 for details of this.

4.27.1 Controlling the visibility of forwarded ports

4.27.2 Selecting Internet protocol version for forwarded
ports
4.27.1 Controlling the visibility of
forwarded ports
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:

The ‘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. (This
also applies to dynamic SOCKS forwarding.)
The ‘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).
4.27.2 Selecting Internet protocol
version for forwarded ports
This switch allows you to select a specific Internet protocol
(IPv4 or IPv6) for the local end of a forwarded port. By
default, it is set on ‘Auto’, which means that:

for a local-to-remote port forwarding, PuTTY will listen

for incoming connections in both IPv4 and (if available)
IPv6
for a remote-to-local port forwarding, PuTTY will choose
a sensible protocol for the outgoing connection.

This overrides the general Internet protocol version

preference on the Connection panel (see section 4.14.4).

Note that some operating systems may listen for incoming

connections in IPv4 even if you specifically asked for IPv6,
because their IPv4 and IPv6 protocol stacks are linked
together. Apparently Linux does this, and Windows does
not. So if you're running PuTTY on Windows and you tick
‘IPv6’ for a local or dynamic port forwarding, it will only be
usable by connecting to it using IPv6; whereas if you do the
same on Linux, you can also use it with IPv4. However,
ticking ‘Auto’ should always give you a port which you can
connect to using either protocol.
4.28 The Bugs and More Bugs panels
Not all SSH servers work properly. Various existing servers
have bugs in them, which can make it impossible for a
client to talk to them unless it knows about the bug and
works around it.

Since most servers announce their software version number

at the beginning of the SSH connection, PuTTY will attempt
to detect which bugs it can expect to see in the server and
automatically enable workarounds. However, sometimes it
will make mistakes; if the server has been deliberately
configured to conceal its version number, or if the server is
a version which PuTTY's bug database does not know about,
then PuTTY will not know what bugs to expect.

The Bugs and More Bugs panels (there are two because we
have so many bug compatibility modes) allow you to
manually configure the bugs PuTTY expects to see in the
server. Each bug can be configured in three states:

‘Off’: PuTTY will assume the server does not have the
bug.
‘On’: PuTTY will assume the server does have the bug.
‘Auto’: PuTTY will use the server's version number
announcement to try to guess whether or not the server
has the bug.

4.28.1 ‘Chokes on SSH-2 ignore messages’

4.28.2 ‘Handles SSH-2 key re-exchange badly’
4.28.3 ‘Chokes on PuTTY's SSH-2 ‘winadj’ requests’
4.28.4 ‘Replies to requests on closed channels’
4.28.5 ‘Ignores SSH-2 maximum packet size’
4.28.6 ‘Requires padding on SSH-2 RSA signatures’
4.28.7 ‘Only supports pre-RFC4419 SSH-2 DH GEX’
4.28.8 ‘Miscomputes SSH-2 HMAC keys’
4.28.9 ‘Misuses the session ID in SSH-2 PK auth’
4.28.10 ‘Miscomputes SSH-2 encryption keys’
4.28.11 ‘Chokes on SSH-1 ignore messages’
4.28.12 ‘Refuses all SSH-1 password camouflage’
4.28.13 ‘Chokes on SSH-1 RSA authentication’
4.28.1 ‘Chokes on SSH-2 ignore
messages’
An ignore message (SSH_MSG_IGNORE) is a message in
the SSH protocol which can be sent from the client to the
server, or from the server to the client, at any time. Either
side is required to ignore the message whenever it receives
it. PuTTY uses ignore messages in SSH-2 to confuse the
encrypted data stream and make it harder to cryptanalyse.
It also uses ignore messages for connection keepalives (see
section 4.14.1).

If it believes the server to have this bug, PuTTY will stop

using ignore messages. If this bug is enabled when talking
to a correct server, the session will succeed, but keepalives
will not work and the session might be less
cryptographically secure than it could be.
4.28.2 ‘Handles SSH-2 key re-
exchange badly’
Some SSH servers cannot cope with repeat key exchange at
all, and will ignore attempts by the client to start one. Since
PuTTY pauses the session while performing a repeat key
exchange, the effect of this would be to cause the session
to hang after an hour (unless you have your rekey timeout
set differently; see section 4.20.2 for more about rekeys).
Other, very old, SSH servers handle repeat key exchange
even more badly, and disconnect upon receiving a repeat
key exchange request.

If this bug is detected, PuTTY will never initiate a repeat key

exchange. If this bug is enabled when talking to a correct
server, the session should still function, but may be less
secure than you would expect.

This is an SSH-2-specific bug.

4.28.3 ‘Chokes on PuTTY's SSH-2
‘winadj’ requests’
PuTTY sometimes sends a special request to SSH servers in
the middle of channel data, with the name
[email protected] (see section F.1). The
purpose of this request is to measure the round-trip time to
the server, which PuTTY uses to tune its flow control. The
server does not actually have to understand the message; it
is expected to send back a SSH_MSG_CHANNEL_FAILURE message
indicating that it didn't understand it. (All PuTTY needs for
its timing calculations is some kind of response.)

It has been known for some SSH servers to get confused by

this message in one way or another – because it has a long
name, or because they can't cope with unrecognised
request names even to the extent of sending back the
correct failure response, or because they handle it sensibly
but fill up the server's log file with pointless spam, or
whatever. PuTTY therefore supports this bug-compatibility
flag: if it believes the server has this bug, it will never send
its ‘[email protected]’ request, and will make
do without its timing data.
4.28.4 ‘Replies to requests on closed
channels’
The SSH protocol as published in RFC 4254 has an
ambiguity which arises if one side of a connection tries to
close a channel, while the other side simultaneously sends a
request within the channel and asks for a reply. RFC 4254
leaves it unclear whether the closing side should reply to
the channel request after having announced its intention to
close the channel.

Discussion on the ietf-ssh mailing list in April 2014 formed a

clear consensus that the right answer is no. However,
because of the ambiguity in the specification, some SSH
servers have implemented the other policy; for example,
OpenSSH used to until it was fixed.

Because PuTTY sends channel requests with the ‘want reply’

flag throughout channels' lifetime (see section 4.28.3), it's
possible that when connecting to such a server it might
receive a reply to a request after it thinks the channel has
entirely closed, and terminate with an error along the lines
of ‘Received SSH2_MSG_CHANNEL_FAILURE for nonexistent channel
256’.
4.28.5 ‘Ignores SSH-2 maximum
packet size’
When an SSH-2 channel is set up, each end announces the
maximum size of data packet that it is willing to receive for
that channel. Some servers ignore PuTTY's announcement
and send packets larger than PuTTY is willing to accept,
causing it to report ‘Incoming packet was garbled on
decryption’.

If this bug is detected, PuTTY never allows the channel's

flow-control window to grow large enough to allow the
server to send an over-sized packet. If this bug is enabled
when talking to a correct server, the session will work
correctly, but download performance will be less than it
could be.
4.28.6 ‘Requires padding on SSH-2
RSA signatures’
Versions below 3.3 of OpenSSH require SSH-2 RSA
signatures to be padded with zero bytes to the same length
as the RSA key modulus. The SSH-2 specification says that
an unpadded signature MUST be accepted, so this is a bug.
A typical symptom of this problem is that PuTTY
mysteriously fails RSA authentication once in every few
hundred attempts, and falls back to passwords.

If this bug is detected, PuTTY will pad its signatures in the

way OpenSSH expects. If this bug is enabled when talking
to a correct server, it is likely that no damage will be done,
since correct servers usually still accept padded signatures
because they're used to talking to OpenSSH.

This is an SSH-2-specific bug.

4.28.7 ‘Only supports pre-RFC4419
SSH-2 DH GEX’
The SSH key exchange method that uses Diffie-Hellman
group exchange was redesigned after its original release, to
use a slightly more sophisticated setup message. Almost all
SSH implementations switched over to the new version.
(PuTTY was one of the last.) A few old servers still only
support the old one.

If this bug is detected, and the client and server negotiate

Diffie-Hellman group exchange, then PuTTY will send the old
message now known as SSH2_MSG_KEX_DH_GEX_REQUEST_OLD in
place of the new SSH2_MSG_KEX_DH_GEX_REQUEST.

This is an SSH-2-specific bug.

4.28.8 ‘Miscomputes SSH-2 HMAC
keys’
Versions 2.3.0 and below of the SSH server software from
ssh.com compute the keys for their HMAC message
authentication codes incorrectly. A typical symptom of this
problem is that PuTTY dies unexpectedly at the beginning of
the session, saying ‘Incorrect MAC received on packet’.

If this bug is detected, PuTTY will compute its HMAC keys in

the same way as the buggy server, so that communication
will still be possible. If this bug is enabled when talking to a
correct server, communication will fail.

This is an SSH-2-specific bug.

4.28.9 ‘Misuses the session ID in
SSH-2 PK auth’
Versions below 2.3 of OpenSSH require SSH-2 public-key
authentication to be done slightly differently: the data to be
signed by the client contains the session ID formatted in a
different way. If public-key authentication mysteriously does
not work but the Event Log (see section 3.1.3.1) thinks it
has successfully sent a signature, it might be worth
enabling the workaround for this bug to see if it helps.

If this bug is detected, PuTTY will sign data in the way

OpenSSH expects. If this bug is enabled when talking to a
correct server, SSH-2 public-key authentication will fail.

This is an SSH-2-specific bug.

4.28.10 ‘Miscomputes SSH-2
encryption keys’
Versions below 2.0.11 of the SSH server software from
ssh.com compute the keys for the session encryption
incorrectly. This problem can cause various error messages,
such as ‘Incoming packet was garbled on decryption’, or
possibly even ‘Out of memory’.

If this bug is detected, PuTTY will compute its encryption

keys in the same way as the buggy server, so that
communication will still be possible. If this bug is enabled
when talking to a correct server, communication will fail.

This is an SSH-2-specific bug.

4.28.11 ‘Chokes on SSH-1 ignore
messages’
An ignore message (SSH_MSG_IGNORE) is a message in
the SSH protocol which can be sent from the client to the
server, or from the server to the client, at any time. Either
side is required to ignore the message whenever it receives
it. PuTTY uses ignore messages to hide the password packet
in SSH-1, so that a listener cannot tell the length of the
user's password; it also uses ignore messages for
connection keepalives (see section 4.14.1).

If this bug is detected, PuTTY will stop using ignore

messages. This means that keepalives will stop working,
and PuTTY will have to fall back to a secondary defence
against SSH-1 password-length eavesdropping. See section
4.28.12. If this bug is enabled when talking to a correct
server, the session will succeed, but keepalives will not work
and the session might be more vulnerable to eavesdroppers
than it could be.
4.28.12 ‘Refuses all SSH-1 password
camouflage’
When talking to an SSH-1 server which cannot deal with
ignore messages (see section 4.28.11), PuTTY will attempt
to disguise the length of the user's password by sending
additional padding within the password packet. This is
technically a violation of the SSH-1 specification, and so
PuTTY will only do it when it cannot use standards-
compliant ignore messages as camouflage. In this sense,
for a server to refuse to accept a padded password packet is
not really a bug, but it does make life inconvenient if the
server can also not handle ignore messages.

If this ‘bug’ is detected, PuTTY will assume that neither

ignore messages nor padding are acceptable, and that it
thus has no choice but to send the user's password with no
form of camouflage, so that an eavesdropping user will be
easily able to find out the exact length of the password. If
this bug is enabled when talking to a correct server, the
session will succeed, but will be more vulnerable to
eavesdroppers than it could be.

This is an SSH-1-specific bug. SSH-2 is secure against this

type of attack.
4.28.13 ‘Chokes on SSH-1 RSA
authentication’
Some SSH-1 servers cannot deal with RSA authentication
messages at all. If Pageant is running and contains any
SSH-1 keys, PuTTY will normally automatically try RSA
authentication before falling back to passwords, so these
servers will crash when they see the RSA attempt.

If this bug is detected, PuTTY will go straight to password

authentication. If this bug is enabled when talking to a
correct server, the session will succeed, but of course RSA
authentication will be impossible.

This is an SSH-1-specific bug.

4.29 The Serial panel
The Serial panel allows you to configure options that only
apply when PuTTY is connecting to a local serial line.

4.29.1 Selecting a serial line to connect to

4.29.2 Selecting the speed of your serial line
4.29.3 Selecting the number of data bits
4.29.4 Selecting the number of stop bits
4.29.5 Selecting the serial parity checking scheme
4.29.6 Selecting the serial flow control scheme
4.29.1 Selecting a serial line to
connect to
The ‘Serial line to connect to’ box allows you to choose
which serial line you want PuTTY to talk to, if your computer
has more than one serial port.

On Windows, the first serial line is called COM1, and if there is

a second it is called COM2, and so on.

This configuration setting is also visible on the Session

panel, where it replaces the ‘Host Name’ box (see section
4.1.1) if the connection type is set to ‘Serial’.
4.29.2 Selecting the speed of your
serial line
The ‘Speed’ box allows you to choose the speed (or ‘baud
rate’) at which to talk to the serial line. Typical values might
be 9600, 19200, 38400 or 57600. Which one you need will
depend on the device at the other end of the serial cable;
consult the manual for that device if you are in doubt.

This configuration setting is also visible on the Session

panel, where it replaces the ‘Port’ box (see section 4.1.1) if
the connection type is set to ‘Serial’.
4.29.3 Selecting the number of data
bits
The ‘Data bits’ box allows you to choose how many data bits
are transmitted in each byte sent or received through the
serial line. Typical values are 7 or 8.
4.29.4 Selecting the number of stop
bits
The ‘Stop bits’ box allows you to choose how many stop bits
are used in the serial line protocol. Typical values are 1, 1.5
or 2.
4.29.5 Selecting the serial parity
checking scheme
The ‘Parity’ box allows you to choose what type of parity
checking is used on the serial line. The settings are:

‘None’: no parity bit is sent at all.

‘Odd’: an extra parity bit is sent alongside each byte,
and arranged so that the total number of 1 bits is odd.
‘Even’: an extra parity bit is sent alongside each byte,
and arranged so that the total number of 1 bits is even.
‘Mark’: an extra parity bit is sent alongside each byte,
and always set to 1.
‘Space’: an extra parity bit is sent alongside each byte,
and always set to 0.
4.29.6 Selecting the serial flow
control scheme
The ‘Flow control’ box allows you to choose what type of
flow control checking is used on the serial line. The settings
are:

‘None’: no flow control is done. Data may be lost if

either side attempts to send faster than the serial line
permits.
‘XON/XOFF’: flow control is done by sending XON and
XOFF characters within the data stream.
‘RTS/CTS’: flow control is done using the RTS and CTS
wires on the serial line.
‘DSR/DTR’: flow control is done using the DSR and DTR
wires on the serial line.
4.30 Storing configuration in a file
PuTTY does not currently support storing its configuration in
a file instead of the Registry. However, you can work around
this with a couple of batch files.

You will need a file called (say) PUTTY.BAT which imports the
contents of a file into the Registry, then runs PuTTY, exports
the contents of the Registry back into the file, and deletes
the Registry entries. This can all be done using the Regedit
command line options, so it's all automatic. Here is what
you need in PUTTY.BAT:
@ECHO OFF
regedit /s putty.reg
regedit /s puttyrnd.reg
start /w putty.exe
regedit /ea new.reg HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\SimonTatham\PuTTY
copy new.reg putty.reg
del new.reg
regedit /s puttydel.reg

This batch file needs two auxiliary files: PUTTYRND.REG which

sets up an initial safe location for the PUTTY.RND random seed
file, and PUTTYDEL.REG which destroys everything in the
Registry once it's been successfully saved back to the file.

Here is PUTTYDEL.REG:

REGEDIT4

[-HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\SimonTatham\PuTTY]

Here is an example PUTTYRND.REG file:

REGEDIT4

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\SimonTatham\PuTTY]
"RandSeedFile"="a:\\putty.rnd"
You should replace a:\putty.rnd with the location where you
want to store your random number data. If the aim is to
carry around PuTTY and its settings on one USB stick, you
probably want to store it on the USB stick.
Chapter 5: Using PSCP to transfer
files securely
PSCP, the PuTTY Secure Copy client, is a tool for
transferring files securely between computers using an SSH
connection.

If you have an SSH-2 server, you might prefer PSFTP (see

chapter 6) for interactive use. PSFTP does not in general
work with SSH-1 servers, however.

5.1 Starting PSCP

5.2 PSCP Usage
5.2.1 The basics
5.2.2 Options
5.2.3 Return value
5.2.4 Using public key authentication with PSCP
5.1 Starting PSCP
PSCP is a command line application. This means that you
cannot just double-click on its icon to run it and instead you
have to bring up a console window. With Windows 95, 98,
and ME, this is called an ‘MS-DOS Prompt’ and with
Windows NT, 2000, and XP, it is called a ‘Command Prompt’.
It should be available from the Programs section of your
Start Menu.

To start PSCP it will need either to be on your PATH or in your

current directory. To add the directory containing PSCP to
your PATH environment variable, type into the console
window:
set PATH=C:\path\to\putty\directory;%PATH%

This will only work for the lifetime of that particular console
window. To set your PATH more permanently on Windows NT,
2000, and XP, use the Environment tab of the System
Control Panel. On Windows 95, 98, and ME, you will need to
edit your AUTOEXEC.BAT to include a set command like the one
above.
5.2 PSCP Usage
Once you've got a console window to type into, you can just
type pscp on its own to bring up a usage message. This tells you
the version of PSCP you're using, and gives you a brief
summary of how to use PSCP:
Z:\owendadmin>pscp
PuTTY Secure Copy client
Release 0.73
Usage: pscp [options] [user@]host:source target
pscp [options] source [source...] [user@]host:target
pscp [options] -ls [user@]host:filespec
Options:
-V print version information and exit
-pgpfp print PGP key fingerprints and exit
-p preserve file attributes
-q quiet, don't show statistics
-r copy directories recursively
-v show verbose messages
-load sessname Load settings from saved session
-P port connect to specified port
-l user connect with specified username
-pw passw login with specified password
-1 -2 force use of particular SSH protocol version
-4 -6 force use of IPv4 or IPv6
-C enable compression
-i key private key file for user authentication
-noagent disable use of Pageant
-agent enable use of Pageant
-hostkey aa:bb:cc:...
manually specify a host key (may be repeated)
-batch disable all interactive prompts
-no-sanitise-stderr don't strip control chars from standard error
-proxycmd command
use 'command' as local proxy
-unsafe allow server-side wildcards (DANGEROUS)
-sftp force use of SFTP protocol
-scp force use of SCP protocol
-sshlog file
-sshrawlog file
log protocol details to a file

(PSCP's interface is much like the Unix scp command, if you're

familiar with that.)
5.2.1 The basics
5.2.1.1 user
5.2.1.2 host
5.2.1.3 source
5.2.1.4 target
5.2.2 Options
5.2.2.1 -ls list remote files
5.2.2.2 -p preserve file attributes
5.2.2.3 -q quiet, don't show statistics
5.2.2.4 -r copies directories recursively
5.2.2.5 -batch avoid interactive prompts
5.2.2.6 -sftp, -scp force use of particular protocol
5.2.2.7 -no-sanitise-stderr: control error message
sanitisation
5.2.3 Return value
5.2.4 Using public key authentication with PSCP
5.2.1 The basics
To receive (a) file(s) from a remote server:
pscp [options] [user@]host:source target

So to copy the file /etc/hosts from the server example.com as

user fred to the file c:\temp\example-hosts.txt, you would
type:
pscp [email protected]:/etc/hosts c:\temp\example-hosts.txt

To send (a) file(s) to a remote server:

pscp [options] source [source...] [user@]host:target

So to copy the local file c:\documents\foo.txt to the server

example.com as user fred to the file /tmp/foo you would type:

pscp c:\documents\foo.txt [email protected]:/tmp/foo

You can use wildcards to transfer multiple files in either

direction, like this:
pscp c:\documents\*.doc [email protected]:docfiles
pscp [email protected]:source/*.c c:\source

However, in the second case (using a wildcard for multiple

remote files) you may see a warning saying something like
‘warning: remote host tried to write to a file called
‘terminal.c’ when we requested a file called ‘*.c’. If this is a
wildcard, consider upgrading to SSH-2 or using the ‘-unsafe’
option. Renaming of this file has been disallowed’.

This is due to a fundamental insecurity in the old-style SCP

protocol: the client sends the wildcard string (*.c) to the
server, and the server sends back a sequence of file names
that match the wildcard pattern. However, there is nothing
to stop the server sending back a different pattern and
writing over one of your other files: if you request *.c, the
server might send back the file name AUTOEXEC.BAT and install
a virus for you. Since the wildcard matching rules are
decided by the server, the client cannot reliably verify that
the filenames sent back match the pattern.

PSCP will attempt to use the newer SFTP protocol (part of

SSH-2) where possible, which does not suffer from this
security flaw. If you are talking to an SSH-2 server which
supports SFTP, you will never see this warning. (You can
force use of the SFTP protocol, if available, with -sftp - see
section 5.2.2.6.)

If you really need to use a server-side wildcard with an

SSH-1 server, you can use the -unsafe command line option
with PSCP:
pscp -unsafe [email protected]:source/*.c c:\source

This will suppress the warning message and the file transfer
will happen. However, you should be aware that by using
this option you are giving the server the ability to write to
any file in the target directory, so you should only use this
option if you trust the server administrator not to be
malicious (and not to let the server machine be cracked by
malicious people). Alternatively, do any such download in a
newly created empty directory. (Even in ‘unsafe’ mode,
PSCP will still protect you against the server trying to get
out of that directory using pathnames including ‘..’.)

5.2.1.1 user
5.2.1.2 host
5.2.1.3 source
5.2.1.4 target
5.2.1.1 user

The login name on the remote server. If this is omitted, and

host is a PuTTY saved session, PSCP will use any username
specified by that saved session. Otherwise, PSCP will
attempt to use the local Windows username.
5.2.1.2 host

The name of the remote server, or the name of an existing

PuTTY saved session. In the latter case, the session's
settings for hostname, port number, cipher type and
username will be used.
5.2.1.3 source

One or more source files. Wildcards are allowed. The syntax

of wildcards depends on the system to which they apply, so
if you are copying from a Windows system to a UNIX
system, you should use Windows wildcard syntax (e.g. *.*),
but if you are copying from a UNIX system to a Windows
system, you would use the wildcard syntax allowed by your
UNIX shell (e.g. *).

If the source is a remote server and you do not specify a

full pathname (in UNIX, a pathname beginning with a /
(slash) character), what you specify as a source will be
interpreted relative to your home directory on the remote
server.
5.2.1.4 target

The filename or directory to put the file(s). When copying

from a remote server to a local host, you may wish simply
to place the file(s) in the current directory. To do this, you
should specify a target of .. For example:
pscp [email protected]:/home/tom/.emacs .

...would copy /home/tom/.emacs on the remote server to the

current directory.

As with the source parameter, if the target is on a remote

server and is not a full path name, it is interpreted relative
to your home directory on the remote server.
5.2.2 Options
PSCP accepts all the general command line options
supported by the PuTTY tools, except the ones which make
no sense in a file transfer utility. See section 3.8.3 for a
description of these options. (The ones not supported by
PSCP are clearly marked.)

PSCP also supports some of its own options. The following

sections describe PSCP's specific command-line options.

5.2.2.1 -ls list remote files

5.2.2.2 -p preserve file attributes
5.2.2.3 -q quiet, don't show statistics
5.2.2.4 -r copies directories recursively
5.2.2.5 -batch avoid interactive prompts
5.2.2.6 -sftp, -scp force use of particular protocol
5.2.2.7 -no-sanitise-stderr: control error message
sanitisation
5.2.2.1 -ls list remote files
If the -ls option is given, no files are transferred; instead,
remote files are listed. Only a hostname specification and
optional remote file specification need be given. For
example:
pscp -ls [email protected]:dir1

The SCP protocol does not contain within itself a means of

listing files. If SCP is in use, this option therefore assumes
that the server responds appropriately to the command ls -
la; this may not work with all servers.

If SFTP is in use, this option should work with all servers.

5.2.2.2 -p preserve file attributes
By default, files copied with PSCP are timestamped with the
date and time they were copied. The -p option preserves the
original timestamp on copied files.
5.2.2.3 -q quiet, don't show statistics
By default, PSCP displays a meter displaying the progress of
the current transfer:
mibs.tar | 168 kB | 84.0 kB/s | ETA: 00:00:13 | 13%

The fields in this display are (from left to right), filename,

size (in kilobytes) of file transferred so far, estimate of how
fast the file is being transferred (in kilobytes per second),
estimated time that the transfer will be complete, and
percentage of the file so far transferred. The -q option to
PSCP suppresses the printing of these statistics.
5.2.2.4 -r copies directories
recursively
By default, PSCP will only copy files. Any directories you
specify to copy will be skipped, as will their contents. The -r
option tells PSCP to descend into any directories you
specify, and to copy them and their contents. This allows
you to use PSCP to transfer whole directory structures
between machines.
5.2.2.5 -batch avoid interactive
prompts
If you use the -batch option, PSCP will never give an
interactive prompt while establishing the connection. If the
server's host key is invalid, for example (see section 2.2),
then the connection will simply be abandoned instead of
asking you what to do next.

This may help PSCP's behaviour when it is used in

automated scripts: using -batch, if something goes wrong at
connection time, the batch job will fail rather than hang.
5.2.2.6 -sftp, -scp force use of
particular protocol
As mentioned in section 5.2.1, there are two different file
transfer protocols in use with SSH. Despite its name, PSCP
(like many other ostensible scp clients) can use either of
these protocols.

The older SCP protocol does not have a written specification

and leaves a lot of detail to the server platform. Wildcards
are expanded on the server. The simple design means that
any wildcard specification supported by the server platform
(such as brace expansion) can be used, but also leads to
interoperability issues such as with filename quoting (for
instance, where filenames contain spaces), and also the
security issue described in section 5.2.1.

The newer SFTP protocol, which is usually associated with

SSH-2 servers, is specified in a more platform independent
way, and leaves issues such as wildcard syntax up to the
client. (PuTTY's SFTP wildcard syntax is described in section
6.2.2.) This makes it more consistent across platforms,
more suitable for scripting and automation, and avoids
security issues with wildcard matching.

Normally PSCP will attempt to use the SFTP protocol, and

only fall back to the SCP protocol if SFTP is not available on
the server.

The -scp option forces PSCP to use the SCP protocol or quit.

The -sftp option forces PSCP to use the SFTP protocol or

quit. When this option is specified, PSCP looks harder for an
SFTP server, which may allow use of SFTP with SSH-1
depending on server setup.
5.2.2.7 -no-sanitise-stderr: control error
message sanitisation
The -no-sanitise-stderr option will cause PSCP to pass
through the server's standard-error stream literally, without
stripping control characters from it first. This might be
useful if the server were sending coloured error messages,
but it also gives the server the ability to have unexpected
effects on your terminal display. For more discussion, see
section 7.2.3.5.
5.2.3 Return value
PSCP returns an ERRORLEVEL of zero (success) only if the files
were correctly transferred. You can test for this in a batch
file, using code such as this:
pscp file*.* user@hostname:
if errorlevel 1 echo There was an error
5.2.4 Using public key authentication
with PSCP
Like PuTTY, PSCP can authenticate using a public key
instead of a password. There are three ways you can do
this.

Firstly, PSCP can use PuTTY saved sessions in place of

hostnames (see section 5.2.1.2). So you would do this:

Run PuTTY, and create a PuTTY saved session (see

section 4.1.2) which specifies your private key file (see
section 4.23.8). You will probably also want to specify a
username to log in as (see section 4.15.1).
In PSCP, you can now use the name of the session
instead of a hostname: type pscp sessionname:file
localfile, where sessionname is replaced by the name of
your saved session.

Secondly, you can supply the name of a private key file on

the command line, with the -i option. See section 3.8.3.18
for more information.

Thirdly, PSCP will attempt to authenticate using Pageant if

Pageant is running (see chapter 9). So you would do this:

Ensure Pageant is running, and has your private key

stored in it.
Specify a user and host name to PSCP as normal. PSCP
will automatically detect Pageant and try to use the
keys within it.

For more general information on public-key authentication,

see chapter 8.
Chapter 6: Using PSFTP to transfer
files securely
PSFTP, the PuTTY SFTP client, is a tool for transferring files
securely between computers using an SSH connection.

PSFTP differs from PSCP in the following ways:

PSCP should work on virtually every SSH server. PSFTP

uses the new SFTP protocol, which is a feature of SSH-2
only. (PSCP will also use this protocol if it can, but there
is an SSH-1 equivalent it can fall back to if it cannot.)
PSFTP allows you to run an interactive file transfer
session, much like the Windows ftp program. You can
list the contents of directories, browse around the file
system, issue multiple get and put commands, and
eventually log out. By contrast, PSCP is designed to do
a single file transfer operation and immediately
terminate.

6.1 Starting PSFTP

6.1.1 -b: specify a file containing batch commands
6.1.2 -bc: display batch commands as they are run
6.1.3 -be: continue batch processing on errors
6.1.4 -batch: avoid interactive prompts
6.2 Running PSFTP
6.2.1 General quoting rules for PSFTP commands
6.2.2 Wildcards in PSFTP
6.2.3 The open command: start a session
6.2.4 The quit command: end your session
6.2.5 The close command: close your connection
6.2.6 The help command: get quick online help
6.2.7 The cd and pwd commands: changing the
remote working directory
 6.2.8 The lcd and lpwd commands: changing the
local working directory
6.2.9 The get command: fetch a file from the server
6.2.10 The put command: send a file to the server
6.2.11 The mget and mput commands: fetch or send
multiple files
6.2.12 The reget and reput commands: resuming file
transfers
6.2.13 The dir command: list remote files
6.2.14 The chmod command: change permissions on
remote files
6.2.15 The del command: delete remote files
6.2.16 The mkdir command: create remote
directories
6.2.17 The rmdir command: remove remote
directories
6.2.18 The mv command: move and rename remote
files
6.2.19 The ! command: run a local Windows
command
6.3 Using public key authentication with PSFTP
6.1 Starting PSFTP
The usual way to start PSFTP is from a command prompt,
much like PSCP. To do this, it will need either to be on your
PATH or in your current directory. To add the directory
containing PSFTP to your PATH environment variable, type
into the console window:
set PATH=C:\path\to\putty\directory;%PATH%

Unlike PSCP, however, PSFTP has no complex command-line

syntax; you just specify a host name and perhaps a user
name:
psftp server.example.com

or perhaps
psftp [email protected]

Alternatively, if you just type psftp on its own (or double-

click the PSFTP icon in the Windows GUI), you will see the
PSFTP prompt, and a message telling you PSFTP has not
connected to any server:
C:\>psftp
psftp: no hostname specified; use "open host.name" to connect
psftp>

At this point you can type open server.example.com or open

[email protected] to start a session.

PSFTP accepts all the general command line options

supported by the PuTTY tools, except the ones which make
no sense in a file transfer utility. See section 3.8.3 for a
description of these options. (The ones not supported by
PSFTP are clearly marked.)
PSFTP also supports some of its own options. The following
sections describe PSFTP's specific command-line options.

6.1.1 -b: specify a file containing batch commands

6.1.2 -bc: display batch commands as they are run
6.1.3 -be: continue batch processing on errors
6.1.4 -batch: avoid interactive prompts
6.1.4.1 -no-sanitise-stderr: control error message
sanitisation
6.1.1 -b: specify a file containing
batch commands
In normal operation, PSFTP is an interactive program which
displays a command line and accepts commands from the
keyboard.

If you need to do automated tasks with PSFTP, you would

probably prefer to specify a set of commands in advance
and have them executed automatically. The -b option allows
you to do this. You use it with a file name containing batch
commands. For example, you might create a file called
myscript.scr containing lines like this:

cd /home/ftp/users/jeff
del jam-old.tar.gz
ren jam.tar.gz jam-old.tar.gz
put jam.tar.gz
chmod a+r jam.tar.gz

and then you could run the script by typing

psftp user@hostname -b myscript.scr

When you run a batch script in this way, PSFTP will abort
the script if any command fails to complete successfully. To
change this behaviour, you can add the -be option (section
6.1.3).

PSFTP will terminate after it finishes executing the batch

script.
6.1.2 -bc: display batch commands as
they are run
The -bc option alters what PSFTP displays while processing a
batch script specified with -b. With the -bc option, PSFTP will
display prompts and commands just as if the commands
had been typed at the keyboard. So instead of seeing this:
C:\>psftp fred@hostname -b batchfile
Sent username "fred"
Remote working directory is /home/fred
Listing directory /home/fred/lib
drwxrwsr-x 4 fred fred 1024 Sep 6 10:42 .
drwxr-sr-x 25 fred fred 2048 Dec 14 09:36 ..
drwxrwsr-x 3 fred fred 1024 Apr 17 2000 jed
lrwxrwxrwx 1 fred fred 24 Apr 17 2000 timber
drwxrwsr-x 2 fred fred 1024 Mar 13 2000 trn

you might see this:

C:\>psftp fred@hostname -bc -b batchfile
Sent username "fred"
Remote working directory is /home/fred
psftp> dir lib
Listing directory /home/fred/lib
drwxrwsr-x 4 fred fred 1024 Sep 6 10:42 .
drwxr-sr-x 25 fred fred 2048 Dec 14 09:36 ..
drwxrwsr-x 3 fred fred 1024 Apr 17 2000 jed
lrwxrwxrwx 1 fred fred 24 Apr 17 2000 timber
drwxrwsr-x 2 fred fred 1024 Mar 13 2000 trn
psftp> quit
6.1.3 -be: continue batch processing
on errors
When running a batch file, this additional option causes
PSFTP to continue processing even if a command fails to
complete successfully.

You might want this to happen if you wanted to delete a file

and didn't care if it was already not present, for example.
6.1.4 -batch: avoid interactive prompts
If you use the -batch option, PSFTP will never give an
interactive prompt while establishing the connection. If the
server's host key is invalid, for example (see section 2.2),
then the connection will simply be abandoned instead of
asking you what to do next.

This may help PSFTP's behaviour when it is used in

automated scripts: using -batch, if something goes wrong at
connection time, the batch job will fail rather than hang.

6.1.4.1 -no-sanitise-stderr: control error message

sanitisation
6.1.4.1 -no-sanitise-stderr: control error
message sanitisation
The -no-sanitise-stderr option will cause PSFTP to pass
through the server's standard-error stream literally, without
stripping control characters from it first. This might be
useful if the server were sending coloured error messages,
but it also gives the server the ability to have unexpected
effects on your terminal display. For more discussion, see
section 7.2.3.5.
6.2 Running PSFTP
Once you have started your PSFTP session, you will see a
psftp> prompt. You can now type commands to perform file-
transfer functions. This section lists all the available
commands.

Any line starting with a # will be treated as a comment and

ignored.

6.2.1 General quoting rules for PSFTP commands

6.2.2 Wildcards in PSFTP
6.2.3 The open command: start a session
6.2.4 The quit command: end your session
6.2.5 The close command: close your connection
6.2.6 The help command: get quick online help
6.2.7 The cd and pwd commands: changing the remote
working directory
6.2.8 The lcd and lpwd commands: changing the local
working directory
6.2.9 The get command: fetch a file from the server
6.2.10 The put command: send a file to the server
6.2.11 The mget and mput commands: fetch or send
multiple files
6.2.12 The reget and reput commands: resuming file
transfers
6.2.13 The dir command: list remote files
6.2.14 The chmod command: change permissions on
remote files
6.2.15 The del command: delete remote files
6.2.16 The mkdir command: create remote directories
6.2.17 The rmdir command: remove remote directories
6.2.18 The mv command: move and rename remote files
6.2.19 The ! command: run a local Windows command
6.2.1 General quoting rules for PSFTP
commands
Most PSFTP commands are considered by the PSFTP
command interpreter as a sequence of words, separated by
spaces. For example, the command ren oldfilename
newfilename splits up into three words: ren (the command
name), oldfilename (the name of the file to be renamed),
and newfilename (the new name to give the file).

Sometimes you will need to specify file names that contain

spaces. In order to do this, you can surround the file name
with double quotes. This works equally well for local file
names and remote file names:
psftp> get "spacey file name.txt" "save it under this name.txt"

The double quotes themselves will not appear as part of the

file names; they are removed by PSFTP and their only effect
is to stop the spaces inside them from acting as word
separators.

If you need to use a double quote (on some types of remote

system, such as Unix, you are allowed to use double quotes
in file names), you can do this by doubling it. This works
both inside and outside double quotes. For example, this
command
psftp> ren ""this"" "a file with ""quotes"" in it"

will take a file whose current name is "this" (with a double

quote character at the beginning and the end) and rename
it to a file whose name is a file with "quotes" in it.

(The one exception to the PSFTP quoting rules is the !

command, which passes its command line straight to
Windows without splitting it up into words at all. See section
6.2.19.)
6.2.2 Wildcards in PSFTP
Several commands in PSFTP support ‘wildcards’ to select
multiple files.

For local file specifications (such as the first argument to

put), wildcard rules for the local operating system are used.
For instance, PSFTP running on Windows might require the
use of *.* where PSFTP on Unix would need *.

For remote file specifications (such as the first argument to

get), PSFTP uses a standard wildcard syntax (similar to
POSIX wildcards):

* matches any sequence of characters (including a zero-

length sequence).
? matches exactly one character.
[abc] matches exactly one character which can be a, b,
or c.

[a-z] matches any character in the range a to z.

[^abc] matches a single character that is not a, b, or c.

Special cases: [-a] matches a literal hyphen (-) or a; [^-

a] matches all other characters. [a^] matches a literal
caret (^) or a.

\ (backslash) before any of the above characters (or

itself) removes that character's special meaning.

A leading period (.) on a filename is not treated specially,

unlike in some Unix contexts; get * will fetch all files,
whether or not they start with a leading period.
6.2.3 The open command: start a
session
If you started PSFTP by double-clicking in the GUI, or just
by typing psftp at the command line, you will need to open
a connection to an SFTP server before you can issue any
other commands (except help and quit).

To create a connection, type open host.name, or if you need to

specify a user name as well you can type open
[email protected]. You can optionally specify a port as well: open
[email protected] 22.

Once you have issued this command, you will not be able to
issue it again, even if the command fails (for example, if
you mistype the host name or the connection times out). So
if the connection is not opened successfully, PSFTP will
terminate immediately.
6.2.4 The quit command: end your
session
When you have finished your session, type the command
quit to close the connection, terminate PSFTP and return to
the command line (or just close the PSFTP console window
if you started it from the GUI).

You can also use the bye and exit commands, which have
exactly the same effect.
6.2.5 The close command: close your
connection
If you just want to close the network connection but keep
PSFTP running, you can use the close command. You can
then use the open command to open a new connection.
6.2.6 The help command: get quick
online help
If you type help, PSFTP will give a short list of the available
commands.

If you type help with a command name - for example, help

get - then PSFTP will give a short piece of help on that
particular command.
6.2.7 The cd and pwd commands:
changing the remote working
directory
PSFTP maintains a notion of your ‘working directory’ on the
server. This is the default directory that other commands
will operate on. For example, if you type get filename.dat
then PSFTP will look for filename.dat in your remote working
directory on the server.

To change your remote working directory, use the cd

command. If you don't provide an argument, cd will return
you to your home directory on the server (more precisely,
the remote directory you were in at the start of the
connection).

To display your current remote working directory, type pwd.

6.2.8 The lcd and lpwd commands:
changing the local working directory
As well as having a working directory on the remote server,
PSFTP also has a working directory on your local machine
(just like any other Windows process). This is the default
local directory that other commands will operate on. For
example, if you type get filename.dat then PSFTP will save
the resulting file as filename.dat in your local working
directory.

To change your local working directory, use the lcd

command. To display your current local working directory,
type lpwd.
6.2.9 The get command: fetch a file
from the server
To download a file from the server and store it on your local
PC, you use the get command.

In its simplest form, you just use this with a file name:
get myfile.dat

If you want to store the file locally under a different name,

specify the local file name after the remote one:
get myfile.dat newname.dat

This will fetch the file on the server called myfile.dat, but will
save it to your local machine under the name newname.dat.

To fetch an entire directory recursively, you can use the -r

option:
get -r mydir
get -r mydir newname

(If you want to fetch a file whose name starts with a

hyphen, you may have to use the -- special argument,
which stops get from interpreting anything as a switch after
it. For example, ‘get -- -silly-name-’.)
6.2.10 The put command: send a file
to the server
To upload a file to the server from your local PC, you use
the put command.

In its simplest form, you just use this with a file name:
put myfile.dat

If you want to store the file remotely under a different

name, specify the remote file name after the local one:
put myfile.dat newname.dat

This will send the local file called myfile.dat, but will store it
on the server under the name newname.dat.

To send an entire directory recursively, you can use the -r

option:
put -r mydir
put -r mydir newname

(If you want to send a file whose name starts with a

hyphen, you may have to use the -- special argument,
which stops put from interpreting anything as a switch after
it. For example, ‘put -- -silly-name-’.)
6.2.11 The mget and mput commands:
fetch or send multiple files
mget works almost exactly like get, except that it allows you
to specify more than one file to fetch at once. You can do
this in two ways:

by giving two or more explicit file names (‘mget file1.txt

file2.txt’)
by using a wildcard (‘mget *.txt’).

Every argument to mget is treated as the name of a file to

fetch (unlike get, which will interpret at most one argument
like that, and a second argument will be treated as an
alternative name under which to store the retrieved file), or
a wildcard expression matching more than one file.

The -r and -- options from get are also available with mget.

mput is similar to put, with the same differences.

6.2.12 The reget and reput commands:
resuming file transfers
If a file transfer fails half way through, and you end up with
half the file stored on your disk, you can resume the file
transfer using the reget and reput commands. These work
exactly like the get and put commands, but they check for
the presence of the half-written destination file and start
transferring from where the last attempt left off.

The syntax of reget and reput is exactly the same as the

syntax of get and put:
reget myfile.dat
reget myfile.dat newname.dat
reget -r mydir

These commands are intended mainly for resuming

interrupted transfers. They assume that the remote file or
directory structure has not changed in any way; if there
have been changes, you may end up with corrupted files. In
particular, the -r option will not pick up changes to files or
directories already transferred in full.
6.2.13 The dir command: list remote
files
To list the files in your remote working directory, just type
dir.

You can also list the contents of a different directory by

typing dir followed by the directory name:
dir /home/fred
dir sources

And you can list a subset of the contents of a directory by

providing a wildcard:
dir /home/fred/*.txt
dir sources/*.c

The ls command works exactly the same way as dir.

6.2.14 The chmod command: change
permissions on remote files
PSFTP allows you to modify the file permissions on files and
directories on the server. You do this using the chmod
command, which works very much like the Unix chmod
command.

The basic syntax is chmod modes file, where modes represents

a modification to the file permissions, and file is the
filename to modify. You can specify multiple files or
wildcards. For example:
chmod go-rwx,u+w privatefile
chmod a+r public*
chmod 640 groupfile1 groupfile2

The modes parameter can be a set of octal digits in the Unix

style. (If you don't know what this means, you probably
don't want to be using it!) Alternatively, it can be a list of
permission modifications, separated by commas. Each
modification consists of:

The people affected by the modification. This can be u

(the owning user), g (members of the owning group), or
o (everybody else - ‘others’), or some combination of
those. It can also be a (‘all’) to affect everybody at
once.
A + or - sign, indicating whether permissions are to be
added or removed.
The actual permissions being added or removed. These
can be r (permission to read the file), w (permission to
write to the file), and x (permission to execute the file,
or in the case of a directory, permission to access files
within the directory).
So the above examples would do:

The first example: go-rwx removes read, write and

execute permissions for members of the owning group
and everybody else (so the only permissions left are the
ones for the file owner). u+w adds write permission for
the file owner.
The second example: a+r adds read permission for
everybody to all files and directories starting with
‘public’.

In addition to all this, there are a few extra special cases for
Unix systems. On non-Unix systems these are unlikely to be
useful:

You can specify u+s and u-s to add or remove the Unix
set-user-ID bit. This is typically only useful for special
purposes; refer to your Unix documentation if you're
not sure about it.
You can specify g+s and g-s to add or remove the Unix
set-group-ID bit. On a file, this works similarly to the
set-user-ID bit (see your Unix documentation again); on
a directory it ensures that files created in the directory
are accessible by members of the group that owns the
directory.
You can specify +t and -t to add or remove the Unix
‘sticky bit’. When applied to a directory, this means that
the owner of a file in that directory can delete the file
(whereas normally only the owner of the directory
would be allowed to).
6.2.15 The del command: delete
remote files
To delete a file on the server, type del and then the filename
or filenames:
del oldfile.dat
del file1.txt file2.txt
del *.o

Files will be deleted without further prompting, even if

multiple files are specified.

del will only delete files. You cannot use it to delete

directories; use rmdir for that.

The rm command works exactly the same way as del.

6.2.16 The mkdir command: create
remote directories
To create a directory on the server, type mkdir and then the
directory name:
mkdir newstuff

You can specify multiple directories to create at once:

mkdir dir1 dir2 dir3
6.2.17 The rmdir command: remove
remote directories
To remove a directory on the server, type rmdir and then the
directory name or names:
rmdir oldstuff
rmdir *.old ancient

Directories will be deleted without further prompting, even

if multiple directories are specified.

Most SFTP servers will probably refuse to remove a

directory if the directory has anything in it, so you will need
to delete the contents first.
6.2.18 The mv command: move and
rename remote files
To rename a single file on the server, type mv, then the
current file name, and then the new file name:
mv oldfile newname

You can also move the file into a different directory and
change the name:
mv oldfile dir/newname

To move one or more files into an existing subdirectory,

specify the files (using wildcards if desired), and then the
destination directory:
mv file dir
mv file1 dir1/file2 dir2
mv *.c *.h ..

The rename and ren commands work exactly the same way as
mv.
6.2.19 The ! command: run a local
Windows command
You can run local Windows commands using the !
command. This is the only PSFTP command that is not
subject to the command quoting rules given in section
6.2.1. If any command line begins with the ! character, then
the rest of the line will be passed straight to Windows
without further translation.

For example, if you want to move an existing copy of a file

out of the way before downloading an updated version, you
might type:
psftp> !ren myfile.dat myfile.bak
psftp> get myfile.dat

using the Windows ren command to rename files on your

local PC.
6.3 Using public key authentication
with PSFTP
Like PuTTY, PSFTP can authenticate using a public key
instead of a password. There are three ways you can do
this.

Firstly, PSFTP can use PuTTY saved sessions in place of

hostnames. So you might do this:

Run PuTTY, and create a PuTTY saved session (see

section 4.1.2) which specifies your private key file (see
section 4.23.8). You will probably also want to specify a
username to log in as (see section 4.15.1).
In PSFTP, you can now use the name of the session
instead of a hostname: type psftp sessionname, where
sessionname is replaced by the name of your saved
session.

Secondly, you can supply the name of a private key file on

the command line, with the -i option. See section 3.8.3.18
for more information.

Thirdly, PSFTP will attempt to authenticate using Pageant if

Pageant is running (see chapter 9). So you would do this:

Ensure Pageant is running, and has your private key

stored in it.
Specify a user and host name to PSFTP as normal.
PSFTP will automatically detect Pageant and try to use
the keys within it.

For more general information on public-key authentication,

see chapter 8.
Chapter 7: Using the command-line
connection tool Plink
Plink is a command-line connection tool similar to UNIX ssh.
It is mostly used for automated operations, such as making
CVS access a repository on a remote server.

Plink is probably not what you want if you want to run an

interactive session in a console window.

7.1 Starting Plink

7.2 Using Plink
7.2.1 Using Plink for interactive logins
7.2.2 Using Plink for automated connections
7.2.3 Plink command line options
7.3 Using Plink in batch files and scripts
7.4 Using Plink with CVS
7.5 Using Plink with WinCVS
7.1 Starting Plink
Plink is a command line application. This means that you
cannot just double-click on its icon to run it and instead you
have to bring up a console window. In Windows 95, 98, and
ME, this is called an ‘MS-DOS Prompt’, and in Windows NT,
2000, and XP, it is called a ‘Command Prompt’. It should be
available from the Programs section of your Start Menu.

In order to use Plink, the file plink.exe will need either to be

on your PATH or in your current directory. To add the
directory containing Plink to your PATH environment variable,
type into the console window:
set PATH=C:\path\to\putty\directory;%PATH%

This will only work for the lifetime of that particular console
window. To set your PATH more permanently on Windows NT,
2000, and XP, use the Environment tab of the System
Control Panel. On Windows 95, 98, and ME, you will need to
edit your AUTOEXEC.BAT to include a set command like the one
above.
7.2 Using Plink
This section describes the basics of how to use Plink for interactive logins
and for automated processes.

Once you've got a console window to type into, you can just type plink
on its own to bring up a usage message. This tells you the version of
Plink you're using, and gives you a brief summary of how to use Plink:
Z:\sysosd>plink
Plink: command-line connection utility
Release 0.73
Usage: plink [options] [user@]host [command]
("host" can also be a PuTTY saved session name)
Options:
-V print version information and exit
-pgpfp print PGP key fingerprints and exit
-v show verbose messages
-load sessname Load settings from saved session
-ssh -telnet -rlogin -raw -serial
force use of a particular protocol
-P port connect to specified port
-l user connect with specified username
-batch disable all interactive prompts
-proxycmd command
use 'command' as local proxy
-sercfg configuration-string (e.g. 19200,8,n,1,X)
Specify the serial configuration (serial only)
The following options only apply to SSH connections:
-pw passw login with specified password
-D [listen-IP:]listen-port
Dynamic SOCKS-based port forwarding
-L [listen-IP:]listen-port:host:port
Forward local port to remote address
-R [listen-IP:]listen-port:host:port
Forward remote port to local address
-X -x enable / disable X11 forwarding
-A -a enable / disable agent forwarding
-t -T enable / disable pty allocation
-1 -2 force use of particular protocol version
-4 -6 force use of IPv4 or IPv6
-C enable compression
-i key private key file for user authentication
-noagent disable use of Pageant
-agent enable use of Pageant
-noshare disable use of connection sharing
-share enable use of connection sharing
-hostkey aa:bb:cc:...
manually specify a host key (may be repeated)
-sanitise-stderr, -sanitise-stdout, -no-sanitise-stderr, -no-sanitise-stdout
do/don't strip control chars from standard output/error
-no-antispoof omit anti-spoofing prompt after authentication
-m file read remote command(s) from file
-s remote command is an SSH subsystem (SSH-2 only)
 -N don't start a shell/command (SSH-2 only)
-nc host:port
open tunnel in place of session (SSH-2 only)
-sshlog file
-sshrawlog file
log protocol details to a file
-shareexists
test whether a connection-sharing upstream exists

Once this works, you are ready to use Plink.

7.2.1 Using Plink for interactive logins

7.2.2 Using Plink for automated connections
7.2.3 Plink command line options
7.2.3.1 -batch: disable all interactive prompts
7.2.3.2 -s: remote command is SSH subsystem
7.2.3.3 -share: Test and try to share an existing connection.
7.2.3.4 -shareexists: test for connection-sharing upstream
7.2.3.5 -sanitise-stream: control output sanitisation
7.2.3.6 : turn off authentication spoofing protection prompt
7.2.1 Using Plink for interactive logins
To make a simple interactive connection to a remote server,
just type plink and then the host name:
Z:\sysosd>plink login.example.com

Debian GNU/Linux 2.2 flunky.example.com

flunky login:

You should then be able to log in as normal and run a

session. The output sent by the server will be written
straight to your command prompt window, which will most
likely not interpret terminal control codes in the way the
server expects it to. So if you run any full-screen
applications, for example, you can expect to see strange
characters appearing in your window. Interactive
connections like this are not the main point of Plink.

In order to connect with a different protocol, you can give

the command line options -ssh, -telnet, -rlogin or -raw. To
make an SSH connection, for example:
Z:\sysosd>plink -ssh login.example.com
login as:

If you have already set up a PuTTY saved session, then

instead of supplying a host name, you can give the saved
session name. This allows you to use public-key
authentication, specify a user name, and use most of the
other features of PuTTY:
Z:\sysosd>plink my-ssh-session
Sent username "fred"
Authenticating with public key "fred@winbox"
Last login: Thu Dec 6 19:25:33 2001 from :0.0
fred@flunky:~$
(You can also use the -load command-line option to load a
saved session; see section 3.8.3.1. If you use -load, the
saved session exists, and it specifies a hostname, you
cannot also specify a host or user@host argument - it will be
treated as part of the remote command.)
7.2.2 Using Plink for automated
connections
More typically Plink is used with the SSH protocol, to enable
you to talk directly to a program running on the server. To
do this you have to ensure Plink is using the SSH protocol.
You can do this in several ways:

Use the -ssh option as described in section 7.2.1.

Set up a PuTTY saved session that describes the server
you are connecting to, and that also specifies the
protocol as SSH.
Set the Windows environment variable PLINK_PROTOCOL to
the word ssh.

Usually Plink is not invoked directly by a user, but run

automatically by another process. Therefore you typically do
not want Plink to prompt you for a user name or a
password.

Next, you are likely to need to avoid the various interactive

prompts Plink can produce. You might be prompted to verify
the host key of the server you're connecting to, to enter a
user name, or to enter a password.

To avoid being prompted for the server host key when using
Plink for an automated connection, you should first make a
manual connection (using either of PuTTY or Plink) to the
same server, verify the host key (see section 2.2 for more
information), and select Yes to add the host key to the
Registry. After that, Plink commands connecting to that
server should not give a host key prompt unless the host
key changes.

To avoid being prompted for a user name, you can:

 Use the -l option to specify a user name on the
command line. For example, plink login.example.com -l
fred.
Set up a PuTTY saved session that describes the server
you are connecting to, and that also specifies the
username to log in as (see section 4.15.1).

To avoid being prompted for a password, you should almost

certainly set up public-key authentication. (See chapter 8
for a general introduction to public-key authentication.)
Again, you can do this in two ways:

Set up a PuTTY saved session that describes the server

you are connecting to, and that also specifies a private
key file (see section 4.23.8). For this to work without
prompting, your private key will need to have no
passphrase.
Store the private key in Pageant. See chapter 9 for
further information.

Once you have done all this, you should be able to run a
remote command on the SSH server machine and have it
execute automatically with no prompting:
Z:\sysosd>plink login.example.com -l fred echo hello, world
hello, world

Z:\sysosd>

Or, if you have set up a saved session with all the

connection details:
Z:\sysosd>plink mysession echo hello, world
hello, world

Z:\sysosd>

Then you can set up other programs to run this Plink

command and talk to it as if it were a process on the server
machine.
7.2.3 Plink command line options
Plink accepts all the general command line options
supported by the PuTTY tools. See section 3.8.3 for a
description of these options.

Plink also supports some of its own options. The following

sections describe Plink's specific command-line options.

7.2.3.1 -batch: disable all interactive prompts

7.2.3.2 -s: remote command is SSH subsystem
7.2.3.3 -share: Test and try to share an existing
connection.
7.2.3.4 -shareexists: test for connection-sharing
upstream
7.2.3.5 -sanitise-stream: control output sanitisation
7.2.3.6 : turn off authentication spoofing protection
prompt
7.2.3.1 -batch: disable all interactive
prompts
If you use the -batch option, Plink will never give an
interactive prompt while establishing the connection. If the
server's host key is invalid, for example (see section 2.2),
then the connection will simply be abandoned instead of
asking you what to do next.

This may help Plink's behaviour when it is used in

automated scripts: using -batch, if something goes wrong at
connection time, the batch job will fail rather than hang.
7.2.3.2 -s: remote command is SSH
subsystem
If you specify the -s option, Plink passes the specified
command as the name of an SSH ‘subsystem’ rather than
an ordinary command line.

(This option is only meaningful with the SSH-2 protocol.)

7.2.3.3 -share: Test and try to share an
existing connection.
This option tris to detect if an existing connection can be
shared (See section 4.19.5 for more information about SSH
connection sharing.) and reuses that connection.

A Plink invocation of the form:

plink -share <session>

will test whether there is currently a viable ‘upstream’ for

the session in question, which can be specified using any
syntax you'd normally use with Plink to make an actual
connection (a host/port number, a bare saved session
name, -load, etc). If no ‘upstream’ viable session is found
and -share is specified, this connection will be become the
‘upstream’ connection for subsequent connection sharing
tries.

(This option is only meaningful with the SSH-2 protocol.)

7.2.3.4 -shareexists: test for
connection-sharing upstream
This option does not make a new connection; instead it
allows testing for the presence of an existing connection
that can be shared. (See section 4.19.5 for more
information about SSH connection sharing.)

A Plink invocation of the form:

plink -shareexists <session>

will test whether there is currently a viable ‘upstream’ for

the session in question, which can be specified using any
syntax you'd normally use with Plink to make an actual
connection (a host/port number, a bare saved session
name, -load, etc). It returns a zero exit status if a usable
‘upstream’ exists, nonzero otherwise.

(This option is only meaningful with the SSH-2 protocol.)

7.2.3.5 -sanitise-stream: control
output sanitisation
In some situations, Plink applies a sanitisation pass to the
output received from the server, to strip out control
characters such as backspace and the escape character.

The idea of this is to prevent remote processes from

sending confusing escape sequences through the standard
error channel when Plink is being used as a transport for
something like git or CVS. If the server actually wants to
send an error message, it will probably be plain text; if the
server abuses that channel to try to write over unexpected
parts of your terminal display, Plink will try to stop it.

By default, this only happens for output channels which are

sent to a Windows console device, or a Unix terminal
device. (Any output stream going somewhere else is likely
to be needed by an 8-bit protocol and must not be
tampered with at all.) It also stops happening if you tell
Plink to allocate a remote pseudo-terminal (see section
3.8.3.12 and section 4.25.1), on the basis that in that
situation you often want escape sequences from the server
to go to your terminal.

But in case Plink guesses wrong about whether you want

this sanitisation, you can override it in either direction,
using one of these options:
-sanitise-stderr
Sanitise server data written to Plink's standard error
channel, regardless of terminals and consoles and remote
ptys.
-no-sanitise-stderr
Do not sanitise server data written to Plink's standard error
channel.
-sanitise-stdout
Sanitise server data written to Plink's standard output
channel.
-no-sanitise-stdout
Do not sanitise server data written to Plink's standard
output channel.
7.2.3.6 : turn off authentication
spoofing protection prompt
In SSH, some possible server authentication methods
require user input (for example, password authentication,
or entering a private key passphrase), and others do not
(e.g. a private key held in Pageant).

If you use Plink to run an interactive login session, and if

Plink authenticates without needing any user interaction,
and if the server is malicious or compromised, it could try to
trick you into giving it authentication data that should not
go to the server (such as your private key passphrase), by
sending what looks like one of Plink's local prompts, as if
Plink had not already authenticated.

To protect against this, Plink's default policy is to finish the

authentication phase with a final trivial prompt looking like
this:
Access granted. Press Return to begin session.

so that if you saw anything that looked like an

authentication prompt after that line, you would know it
was not from Plink.

That extra interactive step is inconvenient. So Plink will turn

it off in as many situations as it can:

If Plink's standard input is not pointing at a console or

terminal device – for example, if you're using Plink as a
transport for some automated application like version
control – then you can't type passphrases into the
server anyway. In that situation, Plink won't try to
 protect you from the server trying to fool you into doing
so.
If Plink is in batch mode (see section 7.2.2), then it
never does any interactive authentication. So anything
looking like an interactive authentication prompt is
automatically suspect, and so Plink omits the anti-
spoofing prompt.

But if you still find the protective prompt inconvenient, and

you trust the server not to try a trick like this, you can turn
it off using the ‘-no-antispoof’ option.
7.3 Using Plink in batch files and
scripts
Once you have set up Plink to be able to log in to a remote
server without any interactive prompting (see section
7.2.2), you can use it for lots of scripting and batch
purposes. For example, to start a backup on a remote
machine, you might use a command like:
plink root@myserver /etc/backups/do-backup.sh

Or perhaps you want to fetch all system log lines relating to

a particular web area:
plink mysession grep /~fred/ /var/log/httpd/access.log > fredlog

Any non-interactive command you could usefully run on the

server command line, you can run in a batch file using Plink
in this way.
7.4 Using Plink with CVS
To use Plink with CVS, you need to set the environment
variable CVS_RSH to point to Plink:
set CVS_RSH=\path\to\plink.exe

You also need to arrange to be able to connect to a remote

host without any interactive prompts, as described in
section 7.2.2.

You should then be able to run CVS as follows:

cvs -d :ext:user@sessionname:/path/to/repository co module

If you specified a username in your saved session, you don't

even need to specify the ‘user’ part of this, and you can just
say:
cvs -d :ext:sessionname:/path/to/repository co module
7.5 Using Plink with WinCVS
Plink can also be used with WinCVS. Firstly, arrange for
Plink to be able to connect to a remote host non-
interactively, as described in section 7.2.2.

Then, in WinCVS, bring up the ‘Preferences’ dialogue box

from the Admin menu, and switch to the ‘Ports’ tab. Tick the
box there labelled ‘Check for an alternate rsh name’ and in
the text entry field to the right enter the full path to
plink.exe. Select ‘OK’ on the ‘Preferences’ dialogue box.

Next, select ‘Command Line’ from the WinCVS ‘Admin’

menu, and type a CVS command as in section 7.4, for
example:
cvs -d :ext:user@hostname:/path/to/repository co module

or (if you're using a saved session):

cvs -d :ext:user@sessionname:/path/to/repository co module

Select the folder you want to check out to with the ‘Change
Folder’ button, and click ‘OK’ to check out your module.
Once you've got modules checked out, WinCVS will happily
invoke plink from the GUI for CVS operations.
Chapter 8: Using public keys for SSH
authentication
8.1 Public key authentication - an introduction
8.2 Using PuTTYgen, the PuTTY key generator
8.2.1 Generating a new key
8.2.2 Selecting the type of key
8.2.3 Selecting the size (strength) of the key
8.2.4 The ‘Generate’ button
8.2.5 The ‘Key fingerprint’ box
8.2.6 Setting a comment for your key
8.2.7 Setting a passphrase for your key
8.2.8 Saving your private key to a disk file
8.2.9 Saving your public key to a disk file
8.2.10 ‘Public key for pasting into OpenSSH
authorized_keys file’
8.2.11 Reloading a private key
8.2.12 Dealing with private keys in other formats
8.3 Getting ready for public key authentication
8.1 Public key authentication - an
introduction
Public key authentication is an alternative means of
identifying yourself to a login server, instead of typing a
password. It is more secure and more flexible, but more
difficult to set up.

In conventional password authentication, you prove you are

who you claim to be by proving that you know the correct
password. The only way to prove you know the password is
to tell the server what you think the password is. This
means that if the server has been hacked, or spoofed (see
section 2.2), an attacker can learn your password.

Public key authentication solves this problem. You generate

a key pair, consisting of a public key (which everybody is
allowed to know) and a private key (which you keep secret
and do not give to anybody). The private key is able to
generate signatures. A signature created using your private
key cannot be forged by anybody who does not have that
key; but anybody who has your public key can verify that a
particular signature is genuine.

So you generate a key pair on your own computer, and you

copy the public key to the server. Then, when the server
asks you to prove who you are, PuTTY can generate a
signature using your private key. The server can verify that
signature (since it has your public key) and allow you to log
in. Now if the server is hacked or spoofed, the attacker does
not gain your private key or password; they only gain one
signature. And signatures cannot be re-used, so they have
gained nothing.
There is a problem with this: if your private key is stored
unprotected on your own computer, then anybody who
gains access to that will be able to generate signatures as if
they were you. So they will be able to log in to your server
under your account. For this reason, your private key is
usually encrypted when it is stored on your local machine,
using a passphrase of your choice. In order to generate a
signature, PuTTY must decrypt the key, so you have to type
your passphrase.

This can make public-key authentication less convenient

than password authentication: every time you log in to the
server, instead of typing a short password, you have to type
a longer passphrase. One solution to this is to use an
authentication agent, a separate program which holds
decrypted private keys and generates signatures on
request. PuTTY's authentication agent is called Pageant.
When you begin a Windows session, you start Pageant and
load your private key into it (typing your passphrase once).
For the rest of your session, you can start PuTTY any
number of times and Pageant will automatically generate
signatures without you having to do anything. When you
close your Windows session, Pageant shuts down, without
ever having stored your decrypted private key on disk.
Many people feel this is a good compromise between
security and convenience. See chapter 9 for further details.

There is more than one public-key algorithm available. The

most common are RSA and ECDSA, but others exist,
notably DSA (otherwise known as DSS), the USA's federal
Digital Signature Standard. The key types supported by
PuTTY are described in section 8.2.2.
8.2 Using PuTTYgen, the PuTTY key
generator
PuTTYgen is a key generator. It generates pairs of public
and private keys to be used with PuTTY, PSCP, and Plink, as
well as the PuTTY authentication agent, Pageant (see
chapter 9). PuTTYgen generates RSA, DSA, ECDSA, and
Ed25519 keys.

When you run PuTTYgen you will see a window where you
have two main choices: ‘Generate’, to generate a new
public/private key pair, or ‘Load’ to load in an existing
private key.

8.2.1 Generating a new key

8.2.2 Selecting the type of key
8.2.3 Selecting the size (strength) of the key
8.2.4 The ‘Generate’ button
8.2.5 The ‘Key fingerprint’ box
8.2.6 Setting a comment for your key
8.2.7 Setting a passphrase for your key
8.2.8 Saving your private key to a disk file
8.2.9 Saving your public key to a disk file
8.2.10 ‘Public key for pasting into OpenSSH
authorized_keys file’
8.2.11 Reloading a private key
8.2.12 Dealing with private keys in other formats
8.2.1 Generating a new key
This is a general outline of the procedure for generating a
new key pair. The following sections describe the process in
more detail.

First, you need to select which type of key you want to

generate, and also select the strength of the key. This is
described in more detail in section 8.2.2 and section
8.2.3.
Then press the ‘Generate’ button, to actually generate
the key. Section 8.2.4 describes this step.
Once you have generated the key, select a comment
field (section 8.2.6) and a passphrase (section 8.2.7).
Now you're ready to save the private key to disk; press
the ‘Save private key’ button. (See section 8.2.8).

Your key pair is now ready for use. You may also want to
copy the public key to your server, either by copying it out
of the ‘Public key for pasting into OpenSSH authorized_keys
file’ box (see section 8.2.10), or by using the ‘Save public
key’ button (section 8.2.9). However, you don't need to do
this immediately; if you want, you can load the private key
back into PuTTYgen later (see section 8.2.11) and the public
key will be available for copying and pasting again.

Section 8.3 describes the typical process of configuring

PuTTY to attempt public-key authentication, and configuring
your SSH server to accept it.
8.2.2 Selecting the type of key
Before generating a key pair using PuTTYgen, you need to
select which type of key you need.

The current version of the SSH protocol, SSH-2, supports

several different key types. PuTTYgen can generate:

An RSA key for use with the SSH-2 protocol.

A DSA key for use with the SSH-2 protocol.
An ECDSA (elliptic curve DSA) key for use with the SSH-
2 protocol.
An Ed25519 key (another elliptic curve algorithm) for
use with the SSH-2 protocol.

PuTTYgen can also generate an RSA key suitable for use

with the old SSH-1 protocol (which only supports RSA); for
this, you need to select the ‘SSH-1 (RSA)’ option. Since the
SSH-1 protocol is no longer considered secure, it's rare to
need this option.
8.2.3 Selecting the size (strength) of
the key
The ‘Number of bits’ input box allows you to choose the
strength of the key PuTTYgen will generate.

For RSA, 2048 bits should currently be sufficient for

most purposes.
For ECDSA, only 256, 384, and 521 bits are supported.
(ECDSA offers equivalent security to RSA with smaller
key sizes.)
For Ed25519, the only valid size is 256 bits.
8.2.4 The ‘Generate’ button
Once you have chosen the type of key you want, and the
strength of the key, press the ‘Generate’ button and
PuTTYgen will begin the process of actually generating the
key.

First, a progress bar will appear and PuTTYgen will ask you
to move the mouse around to generate randomness. Wave
the mouse in circles over the blank area in the PuTTYgen
window, and the progress bar will gradually fill up as
PuTTYgen collects enough randomness. You don't need to
wave the mouse in particularly imaginative patterns
(although it can't hurt); PuTTYgen will collect enough
randomness just from the fine detail of exactly how far the
mouse has moved each time Windows samples its position.

When the progress bar reaches the end, PuTTYgen will

begin creating the key. The progress bar will reset to the
start, and gradually move up again to track the progress of
the key generation. It will not move evenly, and may
occasionally slow down to a stop; this is unfortunately
unavoidable, because key generation is a random process
and it is impossible to reliably predict how long it will take.

When the key generation is complete, a new set of controls

will appear in the window to indicate this.
8.2.5 The ‘Key fingerprint’ box
The ‘Key fingerprint’ box shows you a fingerprint value for
the generated key. This is derived cryptographically from
the public key value, so it doesn't need to be kept secret; it
is supposed to be more manageable for human beings than
the public key itself.

The fingerprint value is intended to be cryptographically

secure, in the sense that it is computationally infeasible for
someone to invent a second key with the same fingerprint,
or to find a key with a particular fingerprint. So some
utilities, such as the Pageant key list box (see section 9.2.1)
and the Unix ssh-add utility, will list key fingerprints rather
than the whole public key.
8.2.6 Setting a comment for your key
If you have more than one key and use them for different
purposes, you don't need to memorise the key fingerprints
in order to tell them apart. PuTTYgen allows you to enter a
comment for your key, which will be displayed whenever
PuTTY or Pageant asks you for the passphrase.

The default comment format, if you don't specify one,

contains the key type and the date of generation, such as
rsa-key-20011212. Another commonly used approach is to use
your name and the name of the computer the key will be
used on, such as simon@simons-pc.

To alter the key comment, just type your comment text into
the ‘Key comment’ box before saving the private key. If you
want to change the comment later, you can load the private
key back into PuTTYgen, change the comment, and save it
again.
8.2.7 Setting a passphrase for your
key
The ‘Key passphrase’ and ‘Confirm passphrase’ boxes allow
you to choose a passphrase for your key. The passphrase
will be used to encrypt the key on disk, so you will not be
able to use the key without first entering the passphrase.

When you save the key, PuTTYgen will check that the ‘Key
passphrase’ and ‘Confirm passphrase’ boxes both contain
exactly the same passphrase, and will refuse to save the
key otherwise.

If you leave the passphrase fields blank, the key will be

saved unencrypted. You should not do this without good
reason; if you do, your private key file on disk will be all an
attacker needs to gain access to any machine configured to
accept that key. If you want to be able to log in without
having to type a passphrase every time, you should
consider using Pageant (chapter 9) so that your decrypted
key is only held in memory rather than on disk.

Under special circumstances you may genuinely need to use

a key with no passphrase; for example, if you need to run
an automated batch script that needs to make an SSH
connection, you can't be there to type the passphrase. In
this case we recommend you generate a special key for
each specific batch script (or whatever) that needs one, and
on the server side you should arrange that each key is
restricted so that it can only be used for that specific
purpose. The documentation for your SSH server should
explain how to do this (it will probably vary between
servers).
Choosing a good passphrase is difficult. Just as you
shouldn't use a dictionary word as a password because it's
easy for an attacker to run through a whole dictionary, you
should not use a song lyric, quotation or other well-known
sentence as a passphrase. DiceWare (www.diceware.com)
recommends using at least five words each generated
randomly by rolling five dice, which gives over 2^64
possible passphrases and is probably not a bad scheme. If
you want your passphrase to make grammatical sense, this
cuts down the possibilities a lot and you should use a longer
one as a result.

Do not forget your passphrase. There is no way to recover

it.
8.2.8 Saving your private key to a
disk file
Once you have generated a key, set a comment field and
set a passphrase, you are ready to save your private key to
disk.

Press the ‘Save private key’ button. PuTTYgen will put up a

dialog box asking you where to save the file. Select a
directory, type in a file name, and press ‘Save’.

This file is in PuTTY's native format (*.PPK); it is the one you

will need to tell PuTTY to use for authentication (see section
4.23.8) or tell Pageant to load (see section 9.2.2).
8.2.9 Saving your public key to a disk
file
RFC 4716 specifies a standard format for storing SSH-2
public keys on disk. Some SSH servers (such as ssh.com's)
require a public key in this format in order to accept
authentication with the corresponding private key. (Others,
such as OpenSSH, use a different format; see section
8.2.10.)

To save your public key in the SSH-2 standard format, press

the ‘Save public key’ button in PuTTYgen. PuTTYgen will put
up a dialog box asking you where to save the file. Select a
directory, type in a file name, and press ‘Save’.

You will then probably want to copy the public key file to
your SSH server machine. See section 8.3 for general
instructions on configuring public-key authentication once
you have generated a key.

If you use this option with an SSH-1 key, the file PuTTYgen
saves will contain exactly the same text that appears in the
‘Public key for pasting’ box. This is the only existing
standard for SSH-1 public keys.
8.2.10 ‘Public key for pasting into
OpenSSH authorized_keys file’
The OpenSSH server, among others, requires your public
key to be given to it in a one-line format before it will
accept authentication with your private key. (SSH-1 servers
also used this method.)

The ‘Public key for pasting into OpenSSH authorized_keys

file’ gives the public-key data in the correct one-line format.
Typically you will want to select the entire contents of the
box using the mouse, press Ctrl+C to copy it to the
clipboard, and then paste the data into a PuTTY session
which is already connected to the server.

See section 8.3 for general instructions on configuring

public-key authentication once you have generated a key.
8.2.11 Reloading a private key
PuTTYgen allows you to load an existing private key file into
memory. If you do this, you can then change the
passphrase and comment before saving it again; you can
also make extra copies of the public key.

To load an existing key, press the ‘Load’ button. PuTTYgen

will put up a dialog box where you can browse around the
file system and find your key file. Once you select the file,
PuTTYgen will ask you for a passphrase (if necessary) and
will then display the key details in the same way as if it had
just generated the key.

If you use the Load command to load a foreign key format,

it will work, but you will see a message box warning you
that the key you have loaded is not a PuTTY native key. See
section 8.2.12 for information about importing foreign key
formats.
8.2.12 Dealing with private keys in
other formats
SSH-2 private keys have no standard format. OpenSSH and
ssh.com have different formats, and PuTTY's is different
again. So a key generated with one client cannot
immediately be used with another.

Using the ‘Import’ command from the ‘Conversions’ menu,

PuTTYgen can load SSH-2 private keys in OpenSSH's format
and ssh.com's format. Once you have loaded one of these
key types, you can then save it back out as a PuTTY-format
key (*.PPK) so that you can use it with the PuTTY suite. The
passphrase will be unchanged by this process (unless you
deliberately change it). You may want to change the key
comment before you save the key, since some OpenSSH
key formats contained no space for a comment, and
ssh.com's default comment format is long and verbose.

PuTTYgen can also export private keys in OpenSSH format

and in ssh.com format. To do so, select one of the ‘Export’
options from the ‘Conversions’ menu. Exporting a key works
exactly like saving it (see section 8.2.8) - you need to have
typed your passphrase in beforehand, and you will be
warned if you are about to save a key without a passphrase.

For OpenSSH there are two options. Modern OpenSSH

actually has two formats it uses for storing private keys.
‘Export OpenSSH key’ will automatically choose the oldest
format supported for the key type, for maximum backward
compatibility with older versions of OpenSSH; for newer key
types like Ed25519, it will use the newer format as that is
the only legal option. If you have some specific reason for
wanting to use OpenSSH's newer format even for RSA,
DSA, or ECDSA keys, you can choose ‘Export OpenSSH key
(force new file format)’.

Most clients for the older SSH-1 protocol use a standard

format for storing private keys on disk. PuTTY uses this
format as well; so if you have generated an SSH-1 private
key using OpenSSH or ssh.com's client, you can use it with
PuTTY, and vice versa. Hence, the export options are not
available if you have generated an SSH-1 key.
8.3 Getting ready for public key
authentication
Connect to your SSH server using PuTTY with the SSH
protocol. When the connection succeeds you will be
prompted for your user name and password to login. Once
logged in, you must configure the server to accept your
public key for authentication:

If your server is OpenSSH, you should change into the

.ssh directory under your home directory, and open the
file authorized_keys with your favourite editor. (You may
have to create this file, if this is the first key you have
put in it.) Then switch to the PuTTYgen window, select
all of the text in the ‘Public key for pasting into
OpenSSH authorized_keys file’ box (see section 8.2.10),
and copy it to the clipboard (Ctrl+C). Then, switch back
to the PuTTY window and insert the data into the open
file, making sure it ends up all on one line. Save the
file.

(In very old versions of OpenSSH, SSH-2 keys had to be

put in a separate file called authorized_keys2. In all
current versions, the same authorized_keys file is used for
both SSH-1 and SSH-2 keys.)

If your server is ssh.com's product and is using SSH-2,

you need to save a public key file from PuTTYgen (see
section 8.2.9), and copy that into the .ssh2 directory on
the server. Then you should go into that .ssh2 directory,
and edit (or create) a file called authorization. In this file
you should put a line like Key mykey.pub, with mykey.pub
replaced by the name of your key file.
 For other SSH server software, you should refer to the
manual for that server.

You may also need to ensure that your home directory, your
.ssh directory, and any other files involved (such as
authorized_keys, authorized_keys2 or authorization) are not
group-writable or world-writable; servers will typically
ignore the keys unless this is done. You can typically do this
by using a command such as
chmod go-w $HOME $HOME/.ssh $HOME/.ssh/authorized_keys

Your server should now be configured to accept

authentication using your private key. Now you need to
configure PuTTY to attempt authentication using your
private key. You can do this in any of three ways:

Select the private key in PuTTY's configuration. See

section 4.23.8 for details.
Specify the key file on the command line with the -i
option. See section 3.8.3.18 for details.
Load the private key into Pageant (see chapter 9). In
this case PuTTY will automatically try to use it for
authentication if it can.
Chapter 9: Using Pageant for
authentication
Pageant is an SSH authentication agent. It holds your
private keys in memory, already decoded, so that you can
use them often without needing to type a passphrase.

9.1 Getting started with Pageant

9.2 The Pageant main window
9.2.1 The key list box
9.2.2 The ‘Add Key’ button
9.2.3 The ‘Remove Key’ button
9.3 The Pageant command line
9.3.1 Making Pageant automatically load keys on
startup
9.3.2 Making Pageant run another program
9.3.3 Restricting the Windows process ACL
9.4 Using agent forwarding
9.5 Security considerations
9.1 Getting started with Pageant
Before you run Pageant, you need to have a private key in
*.PPK format. See chapter 8 to find out how to generate and
use one.

When you run Pageant, it will put an icon of a computer

wearing a hat into the System tray. It will then sit and do
nothing, until you load a private key into it.

If you click the Pageant icon with the right mouse button,
you will see a menu. Select ‘View Keys’ from this menu. The
Pageant main window will appear. (You can also bring this
window up by double-clicking on the Pageant icon.)

The Pageant window contains a list box. This shows the

private keys Pageant is holding. When you start Pageant, it
has no keys, so the list box will be empty. After you add one
or more keys, they will show up in the list box.

To add a key to Pageant, press the ‘Add Key’ button.

Pageant will bring up a file dialog, labelled ‘Select Private
Key File’. Find your private key file in this dialog, and press
‘Open’.

Pageant will now load the private key. If the key is

protected by a passphrase, Pageant will ask you to type the
passphrase. When the key has been loaded, it will appear in
the list in the Pageant window.

Now start PuTTY and open an SSH session to a site that

accepts your key. PuTTY will notice that Pageant is running,
retrieve the key automatically from Pageant, and use it to
authenticate. You can now open as many PuTTY sessions as
you like without having to type your passphrase again.
(PuTTY can be configured not to try to use Pageant, but it
will try by default. See section 4.23.3 and section 3.8.3.9
for more information.)

When you want to shut down Pageant, click the right button
on the Pageant icon in the System tray, and select ‘Exit’
from the menu. Closing the Pageant main window does not
shut down Pageant.
9.2 The Pageant main window
The Pageant main window appears when you left-click on
the Pageant system tray icon, or alternatively right-click
and select ‘View Keys’ from the menu. You can use it to
keep track of what keys are currently loaded into Pageant,
and to add new ones or remove the existing keys.

9.2.1 The key list box

9.2.2 The ‘Add Key’ button
9.2.3 The ‘Remove Key’ button
9.2.1 The key list box
The large list box in the Pageant main window lists the
private keys that are currently loaded into Pageant. The list
might look something like this:
ssh-rsa 2048 22:d6:69:c9:22:51:ac:cb:b9:15:67:47:f7:65:6d:d7 k1
ssh-dss 2048 e4:6c:69:f3:4f:fc:cf:fc:96:c0:88:34:a7:1e:59:d7 k2

For each key, the list box will tell you:

The type of the key. Currently, this can be ssh-rsa (an

RSA key for use with the SSH-2 protocol), ssh-dss (a
DSA key for use with the SSH-2 protocol), ecdsa-sha2-*
(an ECDSA key for use with the SSH-2 protocol), ssh-
ed25519 (an Ed25519 key for use with the SSH-2
protocol), or ssh1 (an RSA key for use with the old SSH-
1 protocol).
The size (in bits) of the key.
The fingerprint for the public key. This should be the
same fingerprint given by PuTTYgen, and (hopefully)
also the same fingerprint shown by remote utilities such
as ssh-keygen when applied to your authorized_keys file.
The comment attached to the key.
9.2.2 The ‘Add Key’ button
To add a key to Pageant by reading it out of a local disk file,
press the ‘Add Key’ button in the Pageant main window, or
alternatively right-click on the Pageant icon in the system
tray and select ‘Add Key’ from there.

Pageant will bring up a file dialog, labelled ‘Select Private

Key File’. Find your private key file in this dialog, and press
‘Open’. If you want to add more than one key at once, you
can select multiple files using Shift-click (to select several
adjacent files) or Ctrl-click (to select non-adjacent files).

Pageant will now load the private key(s). If a key is

protected by a passphrase, Pageant will ask you to type the
passphrase.

(This is not the only way to add a private key to Pageant.

You can also add one from a remote system by using agent
forwarding; see section 9.4 for details.)
9.2.3 The ‘Remove Key’ button
If you need to remove a key from Pageant, select that key
in the list box, and press the ‘Remove Key’ button. Pageant
will remove the key from its memory.

You can apply this to keys you added using the ‘Add Key’
button, or to keys you added remotely using agent
forwarding (see section 9.4); it makes no difference.
9.3 The Pageant command line
Pageant can be made to do things automatically when it
starts up, by specifying instructions on its command line. If
you're starting Pageant from the Windows GUI, you can
arrange this by editing the properties of the Windows
shortcut that it was started from.

If Pageant is already running, invoking it again with the

options below causes actions to be performed with the
existing instance, not a new one.

9.3.1 Making Pageant automatically load keys on

startup
9.3.2 Making Pageant run another program
9.3.3 Restricting the Windows process ACL
9.3.1 Making Pageant automatically
load keys on startup
Pageant can automatically load one or more private keys
when it starts up, if you provide them on the Pageant
command line. Your command line might then look like:
C:\PuTTY\pageant.exe d:\main.ppk d:\secondary.ppk

If the keys are stored encrypted, Pageant will request the

passphrases on startup.

If Pageant is already running, this syntax loads keys into

the existing Pageant.
9.3.2 Making Pageant run another
program
You can arrange for Pageant to start another program once
it has initialised itself and loaded any keys specified on its
command line. This program (perhaps a PuTTY, or a WinCVS
making use of Plink, or whatever) will then be able to use
the keys Pageant has loaded.

You do this by specifying the -c option followed by the

command, like this:
C:\PuTTY\pageant.exe d:\main.ppk -c C:\PuTTY\putty.exe
9.3.3 Restricting the Windows
process ACL
Pageant supports the same -restrict-acl option as the other
PuTTY utilities to lock down the Pageant process's access
control; see section 3.8.3.25 for why you might want to do
this.

By default, if Pageant is started with -restrict-acl, it won't

pass this to any PuTTY sessions started from its System
Tray submenu. Use -restrict-putty-acl to change this.
(Again, see section 3.8.3.25 for details.)
9.4 Using agent forwarding
Agent forwarding is a mechanism that allows applications
on your SSH server machine to talk to the agent on your
client machine.

Note that at present, whether agent forwarding in SSH-2 is

available depends on your server. Pageant's protocol is
compatible with the OpenSSH server, but the ssh.com server
uses a different agent protocol, which PuTTY does not yet
support.

To enable agent forwarding, first start Pageant. Then set up

a PuTTY SSH session in which ‘Allow agent forwarding’ is
enabled (see section 4.23.6). Open the session as normal.
(Alternatively, you can use the -A command line option; see
section 3.8.3.10 for details.)

If this has worked, your applications on the server should

now have access to a Unix domain socket which the SSH
server will forward back to PuTTY, and PuTTY will forward on
to the agent. To check that this has actually happened, you
can try this command on Unix server machines:
unixbox:~$ echo $SSH_AUTH_SOCK
/tmp/ssh-XXNP18Jz/agent.28794
unixbox:~$

If the result line comes up blank, agent forwarding has not

been enabled at all.

Now if you run ssh on the server and use it to connect

through to another server that accepts one of the keys in
Pageant, you should be able to log in without a password:
unixbox:~$ ssh -v otherunixbox
[...]
debug: next auth method to try is publickey
debug: userauth_pubkey_agent: trying agent key my-putty-key
debug: ssh-userauth2 successful: method publickey
[...]

If you enable agent forwarding on that SSH connection as

well (see the manual for your server-side SSH client to find
out how to do this), your authentication keys will still be
available on the next machine you connect to - two SSH
connections away from where they're actually stored.

In addition, if you have a private key on one of the SSH

servers, you can send it all the way back to Pageant using
the local ssh-add command:
unixbox:~$ ssh-add ~/.ssh/id_rsa
Need passphrase for /home/fred/.ssh/id_rsa
Enter passphrase for /home/fred/.ssh/id_rsa:
Identity added: /home/fred/.ssh/id_rsa (/home/simon/.ssh/id_rsa)
unixbox:~$

and then it's available to every machine that has agent

forwarding available (not just the ones downstream of the
place you added it).
9.5 Security considerations
Using Pageant for public-key authentication gives you the
convenience of being able to open multiple SSH sessions
without having to type a passphrase every time, but also
gives you the security benefit of never storing a decrypted
private key on disk. Many people feel this is a good
compromise between security and convenience.

It is a compromise, however. Holding your decrypted private

keys in Pageant is better than storing them in easy-to-find
disk files, but still less secure than not storing them
anywhere at all. This is for two reasons:

Windows unfortunately provides no way to protect

pieces of memory from being written to the system
swap file. So if Pageant is holding your private keys for
a long period of time, it's possible that decrypted
private key data may be written to the system swap file,
and an attacker who gained access to your hard disk
later on might be able to recover that data. (However, if
you stored an unencrypted key in a disk file they would
certainly be able to recover it.)
Although, like most modern operating systems,
Windows prevents programs from accidentally accessing
one another's memory space, it does allow programs to
access one another's memory space deliberately, for
special purposes such as debugging. This means that if
you allow a virus, trojan, or other malicious program on
to your Windows system while Pageant is running, it
could access the memory of the Pageant process,
extract your decrypted authentication keys, and send
them back to its master.
Similarly, use of agent forwarding is a security improvement
on other methods of one-touch authentication, but not
perfect. Holding your keys in Pageant on your Windows box
has a security advantage over holding them on the remote
server machine itself (either in an agent or just unencrypted
on disk), because if the server machine ever sees your
unencrypted private key then the sysadmin or anyone who
cracks the machine can steal the keys and pretend to be
you for as long as they want.

However, the sysadmin of the server machine can always

pretend to be you on that machine. So if you forward your
agent to a server machine, then the sysadmin of that
machine can access the forwarded agent connection and
request signatures from any of your private keys, and can
therefore log in to other machines as you. They can only do
this to a limited extent - when the agent forwarding
disappears they lose the ability - but using Pageant doesn't
actually prevent the sysadmin (or hackers) on the server
from doing this.

Therefore, if you don't trust the sysadmin of a server

machine, you should never use agent forwarding to that
machine. (Of course you also shouldn't store private keys
on that machine, type passphrases into it, or log into other
machines from it in any way at all; Pageant is hardly unique
in this respect.)
Chapter 10: Common error messages
This chapter lists a number of common error messages
which PuTTY and its associated tools can produce, and
explains what they mean in more detail.

We do not attempt to list all error messages here: there are

many which should never occur, and some which should be
self-explanatory. If you get an error message which is not
listed in this chapter and which you don't understand,
report it to us as a bug (see appendix B) and we will add
documentation for it.

10.1 ‘The server's host key is not cached in the registry’

10.2 ‘WARNING - POTENTIAL SECURITY BREACH!’
10.3 ‘SSH protocol version 2 required by our
configuration but remote only provides (old, insecure)
SSH-1’
10.4 ‘The first cipher supported by the server is ...
below the configured warning threshold’
10.5 ‘Remote side sent disconnect message type 2
(protocol error): "Too many authentication failures for
root"’
10.6 ‘Out of memory’
10.7 ‘Internal error’, ‘Internal fault’, ‘Assertion failed’
10.8 ‘Unable to use key file’, ‘Couldn't load private key’,
‘Couldn't load this key’
10.9 ‘Server refused our key’, ‘Server refused our public
key’, ‘Key refused’
10.10 ‘Access denied’, ‘Authentication refused’
10.11 ‘No supported authentication methods available’
10.12 ‘Incorrect MAC received on packet’ or ‘Incorrect
CRC received on packet’
10.13 ‘Incoming packet was garbled on decryption’
10.14 ‘PuTTY X11 proxy: various errors’
10.15 ‘Network error: Software caused connection
abort’
10.16 ‘Network error: Connection reset by peer’
10.17 ‘Network error: Connection refused’
10.18 ‘Network error: Connection timed out’
10.19 ‘Network error: Cannot assign requested address’
10.1 ‘The server's host key is not
cached in the registry’
This error message occurs when PuTTY connects to a new
SSH server. Every server identifies itself by means of a host
key; once PuTTY knows the host key for a server, it will be
able to detect if a malicious attacker redirects your
connection to another machine.

If you see this message, it means that PuTTY has not seen
this host key before, and has no way of knowing whether it
is correct or not. You should attempt to verify the host key
by other means, such as asking the machine's
administrator.

If you see this message and you know that your installation
of PuTTY has connected to the same server before, it may
have been recently upgraded to SSH protocol version 2.
SSH protocols 1 and 2 use separate host keys, so when you
first use SSH-2 with a server you have only used SSH-1
with before, you will see this message again. You should
verify the correctness of the key as before.

See section 2.2 for more information on host keys.

10.2 ‘WARNING - POTENTIAL
SECURITY BREACH!’
This message, followed by ‘The server's host key does not
match the one PuTTY has cached in the registry’, means
that PuTTY has connected to the SSH server before, knows
what its host key should be, but has found a different one.

This may mean that a malicious attacker has replaced your

server with a different one, or has redirected your network
connection to their own machine. On the other hand, it may
simply mean that the administrator of your server has
accidentally changed the key while upgrading the SSH
software; this shouldn't happen but it is unfortunately
possible.

You should contact your server's administrator and see

whether they expect the host key to have changed. If so,
verify the new host key in the same way as you would if it
was new.

See section 2.2 for more information on host keys.

10.3 ‘SSH protocol version 2 required
by our configuration but remote only
provides (old, insecure) SSH-1’
By default, PuTTY only supports connecting to SSH servers
that implement SSH protocol version 2. If you see this
message, the server you're trying to connect to only
supports the older SSH-1 protocol.

If the server genuinely only supports SSH-1, then you need

to either change the ‘SSH protocol version’ setting (see
section 4.19.4), or use the -1 command-line option; in any
case, you should not treat the resulting connection as
secure.

You might start seeing this message with new versions of

PuTTY (from 0.68 onwards) where you didn't before,
because it used to be possible to configure PuTTY to
automatically fall back from SSH-2 to SSH-1. This is no
longer supported, to prevent the possibility of a downgrade
attack.
10.4 ‘The first cipher supported by
the server is ... below the configured
warning threshold’
This occurs when the SSH server does not offer any ciphers
which you have configured PuTTY to consider strong
enough. By default, PuTTY puts up this warning only for
Blowfish, single-DES, and Arcfour encryption.

See section 4.22 for more information on this message.

(There are similar messages for other cryptographic

primitives, such as host key algorithms.)
10.5 ‘Remote side sent disconnect
message type 2 (protocol error): "Too
many authentication failures for
root"’
This message is produced by an OpenSSH (or Sun SSH)
server if it receives more failed authentication attempts
than it is willing to tolerate.

This can easily happen if you are using Pageant and have a
large number of keys loaded into it, since these servers
count each offer of a public key as an authentication
attempt. This can be worked around by specifying the key
that's required for the authentication in the PuTTY
configuration (see section 4.23.8); PuTTY will ignore any
other keys Pageant may have, but will ask Pageant to do
the authentication, so that you don't have to type your
passphrase.

On the server, this can be worked around by disabling

public-key authentication or (for Sun SSH only) by
increasing MaxAuthTries in sshd_config.
10.6 ‘Out of memory’
This occurs when PuTTY tries to allocate more memory than
the system can give it. This may happen for genuine
reasons: if the computer really has run out of memory, or if
you have configured an extremely large number of lines of
scrollback in your terminal. PuTTY is not able to recover
from running out of memory; it will terminate immediately
after giving this error.

However, this error can also occur when memory is not

running out at all, because PuTTY receives data in the
wrong format. In SSH-2 and also in SFTP, the server sends
the length of each message before the message itself; so
PuTTY will receive the length, try to allocate space for the
message, and then receive the rest of the message. If the
length PuTTY receives is garbage, it will try to allocate a
ridiculous amount of memory, and will terminate with an
‘Out of memory’ error.

This can happen in SSH-2, if PuTTY and the server have not
enabled encryption in the same way (see question A.7.3 in
the FAQ).

This can also happen in PSCP or PSFTP, if your login scripts

on the server generate output: the client program will be
expecting an SFTP message starting with a length, and if it
receives some text from your login scripts instead it will try
to interpret them as a message length. See question A.7.4
for details of this.
10.7 ‘Internal error’, ‘Internal fault’,
‘Assertion failed’
Any error beginning with the word ‘Internal’ should never
occur. If it does, there is a bug in PuTTY by definition;
please see appendix B and report it to us.

Similarly, any error message starting with ‘Assertion failed’

is a bug in PuTTY. Please report it to us, and include the
exact text from the error message box.
10.8 ‘Unable to use key file’, ‘Couldn't
load private key’, ‘Couldn't load this
key’
Various forms of this error are printed in the PuTTY window,
or written to the PuTTY Event Log (see section 3.1.3.1)
when trying public-key authentication, or given by Pageant
when trying to load a private key.

If you see one of these messages, it often indicates that

you've tried to load a key of an inappropriate type into
PuTTY, Plink, PSCP, PSFTP, or Pageant.

You may have tried to load an SSH-2 key in a ‘foreign’

format (OpenSSH or ssh.com) directly into one of the PuTTY
tools, in which case you need to import it into PuTTY's
native format (*.PPK) using PuTTYgen – see section 8.2.12.

Alternatively, you may have specified a key that's

inappropriate for the connection you're making. The SSH-2
and the old SSH-1 protocols require different private key
formats, and a SSH-1 key can't be used for a SSH-2
connection (or vice versa).
10.9 ‘Server refused our key’, ‘Server
refused our public key’, ‘Key refused’
Various forms of this error are printed in the PuTTY window,
or written to the PuTTY Event Log (see section 3.1.3.1)
when trying public-key authentication.

If you see one of these messages, it means that PuTTY has

sent a public key to the server and offered to authenticate
with it, and the server has refused to accept authentication.
This usually means that the server is not configured to
accept this key to authenticate this user.

This is almost certainly not a problem with PuTTY. If you see

this type of message, the first thing you should do is check
your server configuration carefully. Common errors include
having the wrong permissions or ownership set on the
public key or the user's home directory on the server. Also,
read the PuTTY Event Log; the server may have sent
diagnostic messages explaining exactly what problem it had
with your setup.

Section 8.3 has some hints on server-side public key setup.

10.10 ‘Access denied’, ‘Authentication
refused’
Various forms of this error are printed in the PuTTY window,
or written to the PuTTY Event Log (see section 3.1.3.1)
during authentication.

If you see one of these messages, it means that the server

has refused all the forms of authentication PuTTY has tried
and it has no further ideas.

It may be worth checking the Event Log for diagnostic

messages from the server giving more detail.

This error can be caused by buggy SSH-1 servers that fail

to cope with the various strategies we use for camouflaging
passwords in transit. Upgrade your server, or use the
workarounds described in section 4.28.11 and possibly
section 4.28.12.
10.11 ‘No supported authentication
methods available’
This error indicates that PuTTY has run out of ways to
authenticate you to an SSH server. This may be because
PuTTY has TIS or keyboard-interactive authentication
disabled, in which case see section 4.23.4 and section
4.23.5.
10.12 ‘Incorrect MAC received on
packet’ or ‘Incorrect CRC received on
packet’
This error occurs when PuTTY decrypts an SSH packet and
its checksum is not correct. This probably means something
has gone wrong in the encryption or decryption process. It's
difficult to tell from this error message whether the problem
is in the client, in the server, or in between.

In particular, if the network is corrupting data at the TCP

level, it may only be obvious with cryptographic protocols
such as SSH, which explicitly check the integrity of the
transferred data and complain loudly if the checks fail.
Corruption of protocols without integrity protection (such as
HTTP) will manifest in more subtle failures (such as
misdisplayed text or images in a web browser) which may
not be noticed.

Occasionally this has been caused by server bugs. An

example is the bug described at section 4.28.8, although
you're very unlikely to encounter that one these days.

In this context MAC stands for Message Authentication

Code. It's a cryptographic term, and it has nothing at all to
do with Ethernet MAC (Media Access Control) addresses, or
with the Apple computer.
10.13 ‘Incoming packet was garbled
on decryption’
This error occurs when PuTTY decrypts an SSH packet and
the decrypted data makes no sense. This probably means
something has gone wrong in the encryption or decryption
process. It's difficult to tell from this error message whether
the problem is in the client, in the server, or in between.

If you get this error, one thing you could try would be to
fiddle with the setting of ‘Miscomputes SSH-2 encryption
keys’ (see section 4.28.10) or ‘Ignores SSH-2 maximum
packet size’ (see section 4.28.5) on the Bugs panel.
10.14 ‘PuTTY X11 proxy: various
errors’
This family of errors are reported when PuTTY is doing X
forwarding. They are sent back to the X application running
on the SSH server, which will usually report the error to the
user.

When PuTTY enables X forwarding (see section 3.4) it

creates a virtual X display running on the SSH server. This
display requires authentication to connect to it (this is how
PuTTY prevents other users on your server machine from
connecting through the PuTTY proxy to your real X display).
PuTTY also sends the server the details it needs to enable
clients to connect, and the server should put this
mechanism in place automatically, so your X applications
should just work.

A common reason why people see one of these messages is

because they used SSH to log in as one user (let's say
‘fred’), and then used the Unix su command to become
another user (typically ‘root’). The original user, ‘fred’, has
access to the X authentication data provided by the SSH
server, and can run X applications which are forwarded over
the SSH connection. However, the second user (‘root’) does
not automatically have the authentication data passed on to
it, so attempting to run an X application as that user often
fails with this error.

If this happens, it is not a problem with PuTTY. You need to

arrange for your X authentication data to be passed from
the user you logged in as to the user you used su to
become. How you do this depends on your particular
system; in fact many modern versions of su do it
automatically.
10.15 ‘Network error: Software
caused connection abort’
This is a generic error produced by the Windows network
code when it kills an established connection for some
reason. For example, it might happen if you pull the
network cable out of the back of an Ethernet-connected
computer, or if Windows has any other similar reason to
believe the entire network has become unreachable.

Windows also generates this error if it has given up on the

machine at the other end of the connection ever responding
to it. If the network between your client and server goes
down and your client then tries to send some data,
Windows will make several attempts to send the data and
will then give up and kill the connection. In particular, this
can occur even if you didn't type anything, if you are using
SSH-2 and PuTTY attempts a key re-exchange. (See section
4.20.2 for more about key re-exchange.)

(It can also occur if you are using keepalives in your

connection. Other people have reported that keepalives fix
this error for them. See section 4.14.1 for a discussion of
the pros and cons of keepalives.)

We are not aware of any reason why this error might occur
that would represent a bug in PuTTY. The problem is
between you, your Windows system, your network and the
remote system.
10.16 ‘Network error: Connection
reset by peer’
This error occurs when the machines at each end of a
network connection lose track of the state of the connection
between them. For example, you might see it if your SSH
server crashes, and manages to reboot fully before you next
attempt to send data to it.

However, the most common reason to see this message is if

you are connecting through a firewall or a NAT router which
has timed the connection out. See question A.7.8 in the FAQ
for more details. You may be able to improve the situation
by using keepalives; see section 4.14.1 for details on this.

Note that Windows can produce this error in some

circumstances without seeing a connection reset from the
server, for instance if the connection to the network is lost.
10.17 ‘Network error: Connection
refused’
This error means that the network connection PuTTY tried to
make to your server was rejected by the server. Usually this
happens because the server does not provide the service
which PuTTY is trying to access.

Check that you are connecting with the correct protocol

(SSH, Telnet or Rlogin), and check that the port number is
correct. If that fails, consult the administrator of your
server.
10.18 ‘Network error: Connection
timed out’
This error means that the network connection PuTTY tried to
make to your server received no response at all from the
server. Usually this happens because the server machine is
completely isolated from the network, or because it is
turned off.

Check that you have correctly entered the host name or IP

address of your server machine. If that fails, consult the
administrator of your server.

Unix also generates this error when it tries to send data

down a connection and contact with the server has been
completely lost during a connection. (There is a delay of
minutes before Unix gives up on receiving a reply from the
server.) This can occur if you type things into PuTTY while
the network is down, but it can also occur if PuTTY decides
of its own accord to send data: due to a repeat key
exchange in SSH-2 (see section 4.20.2) or due to
keepalives (section 4.14.1).
10.19 ‘Network error: Cannot assign
requested address’
This means that the operating system rejected the
parameters of the network connection PuTTY tried to make,
usually without actually trying to connect to anything,
because they were simply invalid.

A common way to provoke this error is to accidentally try to

connect to port 0, which is not a valid port number.
Appendix A: PuTTY FAQ
This FAQ is published on the PuTTY web site, and also
provided as an appendix in the manual.

A.1 Introduction
A.1.1 What is PuTTY?
A.2 Features supported in PuTTY
A.2.1 Does PuTTY support SSH-2?
A.2.2 Does PuTTY support reading OpenSSH or
ssh.com SSH-2 private key files?
A.2.3 Does PuTTY support SSH-1?
A.2.4 Does PuTTY support local echo?
A.2.5 Does PuTTY support storing settings, so I
don't have to change them every time?
A.2.6 Does PuTTY support storing its settings in a
disk file?
A.2.7 Does PuTTY support full-screen mode, like a
DOS box?
A.2.8 Does PuTTY have the ability to remember my
password so I don't have to type it every time?
A.2.9 Is there an option to turn off the annoying
host key prompts?
A.2.10 Will you write an SSH server for the PuTTY
suite, to go with the client?
A.2.11 Can PSCP or PSFTP transfer files in ASCII
mode?
A.3 Ports to other operating systems
A.3.1 What ports of PuTTY exist?
A.3.2 Is there a port to Unix?
A.3.3 What's the point of the Unix port? Unix has
OpenSSH.
A.3.4 Will there be a port to Windows CE or
PocketPC?
A.3.5 Is there a port to Windows 3.1?
 A.3.6 Will there be a port to the Mac?
A.3.7 Will there be a port to EPOC?
A.3.8 Will there be a port to the iPhone?
A.4 Embedding PuTTY in other programs
A.4.1 Is the SSH or Telnet code available as a DLL?
A.4.2 Is the SSH or Telnet code available as a Visual
Basic component?
A.4.3 How can I use PuTTY to make an SSH
connection from within another program?
A.5 Details of PuTTY's operation
A.5.1 What terminal type does PuTTY use?
A.5.2 Where does PuTTY store its data?
A.5.3 Why do small PuTTY icons appear next to the
login prompts?
A.5.4 Why has Plink started saying ‘Press Return to
begin session’?
A.6 HOWTO questions
A.6.1 What login name / password should I use?
A.6.2 What commands can I type into my PuTTY
terminal window?
A.6.3 How can I make PuTTY start up maximised?
A.6.4 How can I create a Windows shortcut to start
a particular saved session directly?
A.6.5 How can I start an SSH session straight from
the command line?
A.6.6 How do I copy and paste between PuTTY and
other Windows applications?
A.6.7 How do I use all PuTTY's features (public
keys, proxying, cipher selection, etc.) in PSCP,
PSFTP and Plink?
A.6.8 How do I use PSCP.EXE? When I double-click
it gives me a command prompt window which then
closes instantly.
A.6.9 How do I use PSCP to copy a file whose name
has spaces in?
 A.6.10 Should I run the 32-bit or the 64-bit
version?
A.7 Troubleshooting
A.7.1 Why do I see ‘Fatal: Protocol error: Expected
control record’ in PSCP?
A.7.2 I clicked on a colour in the Colours panel, and
the colour didn't change in my terminal.
A.7.3 After trying to establish an SSH-2 connection,
PuTTY says ‘Out of memory’ and dies.
A.7.4 When attempting a file transfer, either PSCP
or PSFTP says ‘Out of memory’ and dies.
A.7.5 PSFTP transfers files much slower than PSCP.
A.7.6 When I run full-colour applications, I see
areas of black space where colour ought to be, or
vice versa.
A.7.7 When I change some terminal settings,
nothing happens.
A.7.8 My PuTTY sessions unexpectedly close after
they are idle for a while.
A.7.9 PuTTY's network connections time out too
quickly when network connectivity is temporarily
lost.
A.7.10 When I cat a binary file, I get
‘PuTTYPuTTYPuTTY’ on my command line.
A.7.11 When I cat a binary file, my window title
changes to a nonsense string.
A.7.12 My keyboard stops working once PuTTY
displays the password prompt.
A.7.13 One or more function keys don't do what I
expected in a server-side application.
A.7.14 Why do I see ‘Couldn't load private key from
...’? Why can PuTTYgen load my key but not PuTTY?
A.7.15 When I'm connected to a Red Hat Linux 8.0
system, some characters don't display properly.
 A.7.16 Since I upgraded to PuTTY 0.54, the
scrollback has stopped working when I run screen.
A.7.17 Since I upgraded Windows XP to Service
Pack 2, I can't use addresses like 127.0.0.2.
A.7.18 PSFTP commands seem to be missing a
directory separator (slash).
A.7.19 Do you want to hear about ‘Software caused
connection abort’?
A.7.20 My SSH-2 session locks up for a few seconds
every so often.
A.7.21 PuTTY fails to start up. Windows claims that
‘the application configuration is incorrect’.
A.7.22 When I put 32-bit PuTTY in
C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32 on my 64-bit Windows system,
‘Duplicate Session’ doesn't work.
A.7.23 After I upgraded PuTTY to 0.68, I can no
longer connect to my embedded device or
appliance.
A.8 Security questions
A.8.1 Is it safe for me to download PuTTY and use it
on a public PC?
A.8.2 What does PuTTY leave on a system? How can
I clean up after it?
A.8.3 How come PuTTY now supports DSA, when
the website used to say how insecure it was?
A.8.4 Couldn't Pageant use VirtualLock() to stop
private keys being written to disk?
A.9 Administrative questions
A.9.1 Would you like me to register you a nicer
domain name?
A.9.2 Would you like free web hosting for the PuTTY
web site?
A.9.3 Would you link to my web site from the PuTTY
web site?
A.9.4 Why don't you move PuTTY to SourceForge?
 A.9.5 Why can't I subscribe to the putty-bugs
mailing list?
A.9.6 If putty-bugs isn't a general-subscription
mailing list, what is?
A.9.7 How can I donate to PuTTY development?
A.9.8 Can I have permission to put PuTTY on a
cover disk / distribute it with other software / etc?
A.9.9 Can you sign an agreement indemnifying us
against security problems in PuTTY?
A.9.10 Can you sign this form granting us
permission to use/distribute PuTTY?
A.9.11 Can you write us a formal notice of
permission to use PuTTY?
A.9.12 Can you sign anything for us?
A.9.13 If you won't sign anything, can you give us
some sort of assurance that you won't make PuTTY
closed-source in future?
A.9.14 Can you provide us with export control
information / FIPS certification for PuTTY?
A.9.15 As one of our existing software vendors, can
you just fill in this questionnaire for us?
A.9.16 The sha1sums / sha256sums / etc files on your
download page don't match the binaries.
A.10 Miscellaneous questions
A.10.1 Is PuTTY a port of OpenSSH, or based on
OpenSSH or OpenSSL?
A.10.2 Where can I buy silly putty?
A.10.3 What does ‘PuTTY’ mean?
A.10.4 How do I pronounce ‘PuTTY’?
A.1 Introduction
A.1.1 What is PuTTY?
A.1.1 What is PuTTY?
PuTTY is a client program for the SSH, Telnet and Rlogin
network protocols.

These protocols are all used to run a remote session on a

computer, over a network. PuTTY implements the client end
of that session: the end at which the session is displayed,
rather than the end at which it runs.

In really simple terms: you run PuTTY on a Windows

machine, and tell it to connect to (for example) a Unix
machine. PuTTY opens a window. Then, anything you type
into that window is sent straight to the Unix machine, and
everything the Unix machine sends back is displayed in the
window. So you can work on the Unix machine as if you
were sitting at its console, while actually sitting somewhere
else.
A.2 Features supported in PuTTY
In general, if you want to know if PuTTY supports a
particular feature, you should look for it on the PuTTY web
site. In particular:

try the changes page, and see if you can find the
feature on there. If a feature is listed there, it's been
implemented. If it's listed as a change made since the
latest version, it should be available in the development
snapshots, in which case testing will be very welcome.
try the Wishlist page, and see if you can find the feature
there. If it's on there, and not in the ‘Recently fixed’
section, it probably hasn't been implemented.

A.2.1 Does PuTTY support SSH-2?

A.2.2 Does PuTTY support reading OpenSSH or ssh.com
SSH-2 private key files?
A.2.3 Does PuTTY support SSH-1?
A.2.4 Does PuTTY support local echo?
A.2.5 Does PuTTY support storing settings, so I don't
have to change them every time?
A.2.6 Does PuTTY support storing its settings in a disk
file?
A.2.7 Does PuTTY support full-screen mode, like a DOS
box?
A.2.8 Does PuTTY have the ability to remember my
password so I don't have to type it every time?
A.2.9 Is there an option to turn off the annoying host
key prompts?
A.2.10 Will you write an SSH server for the PuTTY suite,
to go with the client?
A.2.11 Can PSCP or PSFTP transfer files in ASCII mode?
A.2.1 Does PuTTY support SSH-2?
Yes. SSH-2 support has been available in PuTTY since
version 0.50 in 2000.

Public key authentication (both RSA and DSA) in SSH-2 was

new in version 0.52 in 2002.
A.2.2 Does PuTTY support reading
OpenSSH or ssh.com SSH-2 private key
files?
PuTTY doesn't support this natively (see the wishlist entry
for reasons why not), but as of 0.53 PuTTYgen can convert
both OpenSSH and ssh.com private key files into PuTTY's
format.
A.2.3 Does PuTTY support SSH-1?
Yes. SSH-1 support has always been available in PuTTY.

However, the SSH-1 protocol has many weaknesses and is

no longer considered secure; you should use SSH-2 instead
if at all possible.

As of 0.68, PuTTY will no longer fall back to SSH-1 if the

server doesn't appear to support SSH-2; you must explicitly
ask for SSH-1.
A.2.4 Does PuTTY support local echo?
Yes. Version 0.52 has proper support for local echo.

In version 0.51 and before, local echo could not be

separated from local line editing (where you type a line of
text locally, and it is not sent to the server until you press
Return, so you have the chance to edit it and correct
mistakes before the server sees it). New in version 0.52,
local echo and local line editing are separate options, and by
default PuTTY will try to determine automatically whether to
enable them or not, based on which protocol you have
selected and also based on hints from the server. If you
have a problem with PuTTY's default choice, you can force
each option to be enabled or disabled as you choose. The
controls are in the Terminal panel, in the section marked
‘Line discipline options’.
A.2.5 Does PuTTY support storing
settings, so I don't have to change
them every time?
Yes, all of PuTTY's settings can be saved in named session
profiles. You can also change the default settings that are
used for new sessions. See section 4.1.2 in the
documentation for how to do this.
A.2.6 Does PuTTY support storing its
settings in a disk file?
Not at present, although section 4.30 in the documentation
gives a method of achieving the same effect.
A.2.7 Does PuTTY support full-screen
mode, like a DOS box?
Yes; this was added in version 0.52, in 2002.
A.2.8 Does PuTTY have the ability to
remember my password so I don't
have to type it every time?
No, it doesn't.

Remembering your password is a bad plan for obvious

security reasons: anyone who gains access to your machine
while you're away from your desk can find out the
remembered password, and use it, abuse it or change it.

In addition, it's not even possible for PuTTY to automatically

send your password in a Telnet session, because Telnet
doesn't give the client software any indication of which part
of the login process is the password prompt. PuTTY would
have to guess, by looking for words like ‘password’ in the
session data; and if your login program is written in
something other than English, this won't work.

In SSH, remembering your password would be possible in

theory, but there doesn't seem to be much point since SSH
supports public key authentication, which is more flexible
and more secure. See chapter 8 in the documentation for a
full discussion of public key authentication.
A.2.9 Is there an option to turn off
the annoying host key prompts?
No, there isn't. And there won't be. Even if you write it
yourself and send us the patch, we won't accept it.

Those annoying host key prompts are the whole point of

SSH. Without them, all the cryptographic technology SSH
uses to secure your session is doing nothing more than
making an attacker's job slightly harder; instead of sitting
between you and the server with a packet sniffer, the
attacker must actually subvert a router and start modifying
the packets going back and forth. But that's not all that
much harder than just sniffing; and without host key
checking, it will go completely undetected by client or
server.

Host key checking is your guarantee that the encryption you

put on your data at the client end is the same encryption
taken off the data at the server end; it's your guarantee
that it hasn't been removed and replaced somewhere on the
way. Host key checking makes the attacker's job
astronomically hard, compared to packet sniffing, and even
compared to subverting a router. Instead of applying a little
intelligence and keeping an eye on Bugtraq, the attacker
must now perform a brute-force attack against at least one
military-strength cipher. That insignificant host key prompt
really does make that much difference.

If you're having a specific problem with host key checking -

perhaps you want an automated batch job to make use of
PSCP or Plink, and the interactive host key prompt is
hanging the batch process - then the right way to fix it is to
add the correct host key to the Registry in advance, or if the
Registry is not available, to use the -hostkey command-line
option. That way, you retain the important feature of host
key checking: the right key will be accepted and the wrong
ones will not. Adding an option to turn host key checking off
completely is the wrong solution and we will not do it.

If you have host keys available in the common known_hosts

format, we have a script called kh2reg.py to convert them to
a Windows .REG file, which can be installed ahead of time
by double-clicking or using REGEDIT.
A.2.10 Will you write an SSH server
for the PuTTY suite, to go with the
client?
Not one that you'd want to use.

While much of the protocol and networking code can be

made common between a client and server, to make a
useful general-purpose server requires all sorts of fiddly
new code like interacting with OS authentication databases
and the like.

A special-purpose SSH server (called Uppity) can now be

built from the PuTTY source code, and indeed it is not
usable as a general-purpose server; it exists mainly as a
test harness.

If someone else wants to use this as a basis for writing a

general-purpose SSH server, they'd be perfectly welcome to
of course; but we don't have time, and we don't have
motivation. The code is available if anyone else wants to try
it.
A.2.11 Can PSCP or PSFTP transfer
files in ASCII mode?
Unfortunately not.

This was a limitation of the file transfer protocols as

originally specified: the SCP and SFTP protocols had no
notion of transferring a file in anything other than binary
mode. (This is still true of SCP.)

The current draft protocol spec of SFTP proposes a means

of implementing ASCII transfer. At some point PSCP/PSFTP
may implement this proposal.
A.3 Ports to other operating systems
The eventual goal is for PuTTY to be a multi-platform
program, able to run on at least Windows, Mac OS and
Unix.

PuTTY has been gaining a generalised porting layer, drawing

a clear line between platform-dependent and platform-
independent code. The general intention was for this porting
layer to evolve naturally as part of the process of doing the
first port; a Unix port has now been released and the plan
seems to be working so far.

A.3.1 What ports of PuTTY exist?

A.3.2 Is there a port to Unix?
A.3.3 What's the point of the Unix port? Unix has
OpenSSH.
A.3.4 Will there be a port to Windows CE or PocketPC?
A.3.5 Is there a port to Windows 3.1?
A.3.6 Will there be a port to the Mac?
A.3.7 Will there be a port to EPOC?
A.3.8 Will there be a port to the iPhone?
A.3.1 What ports of PuTTY exist?
Currently, release versions of PuTTY tools only run on
Windows systems and Unix.

As of 0.68, the supplied PuTTY executables run on versions

of Windows from XP onwards, up to and including Windows
10; and we know of no reason why PuTTY should not
continue to work on future versions of Windows. We provide
32-bit and 64-bit Windows executables for the common x86
processor family; see question A.6.10 for discussion of the
compatibility issues around that. The 32-bit executables
require a Pentium 4 or newer processor. We also provide
executables for Windows on Arm processors.

(We used to also provide executables for Windows for the

Alpha processor, but stopped after 0.58 due to lack of
interest.)

In the development code, a partial port to Mac OS exists

(see question A.3.6).

Currently PuTTY does not run on Windows CE (see question

A.3.4).

We do not have release-quality ports for any other systems

at the present time. If anyone told you we had an Android
port, or an iOS port, or any other port of PuTTY, they were
mistaken. We don't.

There are some third-party ports to various platforms,

mentioned on the Links page of our website.
A.3.2 Is there a port to Unix?
There are Unix ports of most of the traditional PuTTY tools,
and also one entirely new application.

If you look at the source release, you should find a unix

subdirectory. There are a couple of ways of building it,
including the usual configure/make; see the file README in the
source distribution. This should build you:

Unix ports of PuTTY, Plink, PSCP, and PSFTP, which work

pretty much the same as their Windows counterparts;
Command-line versions of PuTTYgen and Pageant,
whose user interface is quite different to the Windows
GUI versions;
pterm - an xterm-type program which supports the same
terminal emulation as PuTTY.

If you don't have Gtk, you should still be able to build the
command-line tools.
A.3.3 What's the point of the Unix
port? Unix has OpenSSH.
All sorts of little things. pterm is directly useful to anyone
who prefers PuTTY's terminal emulation to xterm's, which at
least some people do. Unix Plink has apparently found a
niche among people who find the complexity of OpenSSL
makes OpenSSH hard to install (and who don't mind Plink
not having as many features). Some users want to generate
a large number of SSH keys on Unix and then copy them all
into PuTTY, and the Unix PuTTYgen should allow them to
automate that conversion process.

There were development advantages as well; porting PuTTY

to Unix was a valuable path-finding effort for other future
ports, and also allowed us to use the excellent Linux tool
Valgrind to help with debugging, which has already
improved PuTTY's stability on all platforms.

However, if you're a Unix user and you can see no reason to

switch from OpenSSH to PuTTY/Plink, then you're probably
right. We don't expect our Unix port to be the right thing for
everybody.
A.3.4 Will there be a port to Windows
CE or PocketPC?
We once did some work on such a port, but it only reached
an early stage, and certainly not a useful one. It's no longer
being actively worked on.
A.3.5 Is there a port to Windows 3.1?
PuTTY is a 32-bit application from the ground up, so it won't
run on Windows 3.1 as a native 16-bit program; and it
would be very hard to port it to do so, because of Windows
3.1's vile memory allocation mechanisms.

However, it is possible in theory to compile the existing

PuTTY source in such a way that it will run under Win32s
(an extension to Windows 3.1 to let you run 32-bit
programs). In order to do this you'll need the right kind of C
compiler - modern versions of Visual C at least have
stopped being backwards compatible to Win32s. Also, the
last time we tried this it didn't work very well.
A.3.6 Will there be a port to the Mac?
We hope so!

We attempted one around 2005, written as a native Cocoa

application, but it turned out to be very slow to redraw its
window for some reason we never got to the bottom of.

In 2015, after porting the GTK front end to work with GTK
3, we began another attempt based on making small
changes to the GTK code and building it against the OS X
Quartz version of GTK 3. This doesn't seem to have the
window redrawing problem any more, so it's already got
further than the last effort, but it is still substantially
unfinished.

If any OS X and/or GTK programming experts are keen to

have a finished version of this, we urge them to help out
with some of the remaining problems! See the TODO list in
unix/gtkapp.c in the source code.
A.3.7 Will there be a port to EPOC?
I hope so, but given that ports aren't really progressing
very fast even on systems the developers do already know
how to program for, it might be a long time before any of us
get round to learning a new system and doing the port for
that.

However, some of the work has been done by other people;

see the Links page of our website for various third-party
ports.
A.3.8 Will there be a port to the
iPhone?
We have no plans to write such a port ourselves; none of us
has an iPhone, and developing and publishing applications
for it looks awkward and expensive.

However, there is a third-party SSH client for the iPhone

and iPod Touch called pTerm, which is apparently based on
PuTTY. (This is nothing to do with our similarly-named pterm,
which is a standalone terminal emulator for Unix systems;
see question A.3.2.)
A.4 Embedding PuTTY in other
programs
A.4.1 Is the SSH or Telnet code available as a DLL?
A.4.2 Is the SSH or Telnet code available as a Visual
Basic component?
A.4.3 How can I use PuTTY to make an SSH connection
from within another program?
A.4.1 Is the SSH or Telnet code
available as a DLL?
No, it isn't. It would take a reasonable amount of rewriting
for this to be possible, and since the PuTTY project itself
doesn't believe in DLLs (they make installation more error-
prone) none of us has taken the time to do it.

Most of the code cleanup work would be a good thing to

happen in general, so if anyone feels like helping, we
wouldn't say no.

See also the wishlist entry.

A.4.2 Is the SSH or Telnet code
available as a Visual Basic
component?
No, it isn't. None of the PuTTY team uses Visual Basic, and
none of us has any particular need to make SSH
connections from a Visual Basic application. In addition, all
the preliminary work to turn it into a DLL would be
necessary first; and furthermore, we don't even know how
to write VB components.

If someone offers to do some of this work for us, we might

consider it, but unless that happens I can't see VB
integration being anywhere other than the very bottom of
our priority list.
A.4.3 How can I use PuTTY to make
an SSH connection from within
another program?
Probably your best bet is to use Plink, the command-line
connection tool. If you can start Plink as a second Windows
process, and arrange for your primary process to be able to
send data to the Plink process, and receive data from it,
through pipes, then you should be able to make SSH
connections from your program.

This is what CVS for Windows does, for example.

A.5 Details of PuTTY's operation
A.5.1 What terminal type does PuTTY use?
A.5.2 Where does PuTTY store its data?
A.5.3 Why do small PuTTY icons appear next to the
login prompts?
A.5.4 Why has Plink started saying ‘Press Return to
begin session’?
A.5.1 What terminal type does PuTTY
use?
For most purposes, PuTTY can be considered to be an xterm
terminal.

PuTTY also supports some terminal control sequences not

supported by the real xterm: notably the Linux console
sequences that reconfigure the colour palette, and the title
bar control sequences used by DECterm (which are different
from the xterm ones; PuTTY supports both).

By default, PuTTY announces its terminal type to the server

as xterm. If you have a problem with this, you can
reconfigure it to say something else; vt220 might help if you
have trouble.
A.5.2 Where does PuTTY store its
data?
On Windows, PuTTY stores most of its data (saved sessions,
SSH host keys) in the Registry. The precise location is
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\SimonTatham\PuTTY

and within that area, saved sessions are stored under

Sessions while host keys are stored under SshHostKeys.

PuTTY also requires a random number seed file, to improve

the unpredictability of randomly chosen data needed as part
of the SSH cryptography. This is stored by default in a file
called PUTTY.RND; this is stored by default in the ‘Application
Data’ directory, or failing that, one of a number of fallback
locations. If you want to change the location of the random
number seed file, you can put your chosen pathname in the
Registry, at
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\SimonTatham\PuTTY\RandSeedFile

You can ask PuTTY to delete all this data; see question
A.8.2.

On Unix, PuTTY stores all of this data in a directory ~/.putty

by default.
A.5.3 Why do small PuTTY icons
appear next to the login prompts?
As of PuTTY 0.71, some lines of text in the terminal window
are marked with a small copy of the PuTTY icon (as far as
pixels allow).

This is to show trustworthiness. When the PuTTY icon

appears next to a line of text, it indicates that that line of
text was generated by PuTTY itself, and not generated by
the server and sent to PuTTY.

Text that comes from the server does not have this icon,
and we've arranged that the server should not be able to
fake it. (There's no control sequence the server can send
which will make PuTTY draw its own icon, and if the server
tries to move the cursor back up to a line that already has
an icon and overwrite the text, the icon will disappear.)

This lets you tell the difference between (for example) a

legitimate prompt in which PuTTY itself asks you for your
private key passphrase, and a fake prompt in which the
server tries to send the identical text to trick you into telling
it your private key passphrase.
A.5.4 Why has Plink started saying
‘Press Return to begin session’?
As of PuTTY 0.71, if you use Plink for an interactive SSH
session, then after the login phase has finished, it will
present a final interactive prompt saying ‘Access granted.
Press Return to begin session’.

This is another defence against servers trying to mimic the

real authentication prompts after the session has started.
When you pass through that prompt, you know that
everything after it is generated by the server and not by
Plink itself, so any request for your private key passphrase
should be treated with suspicion.

In Plink, we can't use the defence described in section

A.5.3: Plink is running in the terminal, so anything it can
write into the terminal, the server could write in the same
way after the session starts. And we can't just print a
separator line without a pause, because then the server
could simply move the cursor back up to it and overwrite it
(probably with a brief flicker, but you might easily miss
that). The only robust defence anyone has come up with
involves this pause.

If you trust your server not to be abusive, you can turn this
off. It will also not appear in various other circumstances
where Plink can be confident it isn't necessary. See section
7.2.3.6 for details.
A.6 HOWTO questions
A.6.1 What login name / password should I use?
A.6.2 What commands can I type into my PuTTY
terminal window?
A.6.3 How can I make PuTTY start up maximised?
A.6.4 How can I create a Windows shortcut to start a
particular saved session directly?
A.6.5 How can I start an SSH session straight from the
command line?
A.6.6 How do I copy and paste between PuTTY and
other Windows applications?
A.6.7 How do I use all PuTTY's features (public keys,
proxying, cipher selection, etc.) in PSCP, PSFTP and
Plink?
A.6.8 How do I use PSCP.EXE? When I double-click it
gives me a command prompt window which then closes
instantly.
A.6.9 How do I use PSCP to copy a file whose name has
spaces in?
A.6.10 Should I run the 32-bit or the 64-bit version?
A.6.1 What login name / password
should I use?
This is not a question you should be asking us.

PuTTY is a communications tool, for making connections to

other computers. We maintain the tool; we don't administer
any computers that you're likely to be able to use, in the
same way that the people who make web browsers aren't
responsible for most of the content you can view in them.
We cannot help with questions of this sort.

If you know the name of the computer you want to connect

to, but don't know what login name or password to use, you
should talk to whoever administers that computer. If you
don't know who that is, see the next question for some
possible ways to find out.
A.6.2 What commands can I type into
my PuTTY terminal window?
Again, this is not a question you should be asking us. You
need to read the manuals, or ask the administrator, of the
computer you have connected to.

PuTTY does not process the commands you type into it. It's
only a communications tool. It makes a connection to
another computer; it passes the commands you type to that
other computer; and it passes the other computer's
responses back to you. Therefore, the precise range of
commands you can use will not depend on PuTTY, but on
what kind of computer you have connected to and what
software is running on it. The PuTTY team cannot help you
with that.

(Think of PuTTY as being a bit like a telephone. If you phone

somebody up and you don't know what language to speak
to make them understand you, it isn't the telephone
company's job to find that out for you. We just provide the
means for you to get in touch; making yourself understood
is somebody else's problem.)

If you are unsure of where to start looking for the

administrator of your server, a good place to start might be
to remember how you found out the host name in the
PuTTY configuration. If you were given that host name by e-
mail, for example, you could try asking the person who sent
you that e-mail. If your company's IT department provided
you with ready-made PuTTY saved sessions, then that IT
department can probably also tell you something about
what commands you can type during those sessions. But
the PuTTY maintainer team does not administer any server
you are likely to be connecting to, and cannot help you with
questions of this type.
A.6.3 How can I make PuTTY start up
maximised?
Create a Windows shortcut to start PuTTY from, and set it
as ‘Run Maximized’.
A.6.4 How can I create a Windows
shortcut to start a particular saved
session directly?
To run a PuTTY session saved under the name ‘mysession’,
create a Windows shortcut that invokes PuTTY with a
command line like
\path\name\to\putty.exe -load "mysession"

(Note: prior to 0.53, the syntax was @session. This is now

deprecated and may be removed at some point.)
A.6.5 How can I start an SSH session
straight from the command line?
Use the command line putty -ssh host.name. Alternatively,
create a saved session that specifies the SSH protocol, and
start the saved session as shown in question A.6.4.
A.6.6 How do I copy and paste
between PuTTY and other Windows
applications?
Copy and paste works similarly to the X Window System.
You use the left mouse button to select text in the PuTTY
window. The act of selection automatically copies the text to
the clipboard: there is no need to press Ctrl-Ins or Ctrl-C or
anything else. In fact, pressing Ctrl-C will send a Ctrl-C
character to the other end of your connection (just like it
does the rest of the time), which may have unpleasant
effects. The only thing you need to do, to copy text to the
clipboard, is to select it.

To paste the clipboard contents into a PuTTY window, by

default you click the right mouse button. If you have a
three-button mouse and are used to X applications, you can
configure pasting to be done by the middle button instead,
but this is not the default because most Windows users
don't have a middle button at all.

You can also paste by pressing Shift-Ins.

A.6.7 How do I use all PuTTY's
features (public keys, proxying,
cipher selection, etc.) in PSCP, PSFTP
and Plink?
Most major features (e.g., public keys, port forwarding) are
available through command line options. See the
documentation.

Not all features are accessible from the command line yet,
although we'd like to fix this. In the meantime, you can use
most of PuTTY's features if you create a PuTTY saved
session, and then use the name of the saved session on the
command line in place of a hostname. This works for PSCP,
PSFTP and Plink (but don't expect port forwarding in the file
transfer applications!).
A.6.8 How do I use PSCP.EXE? When I
double-click it gives me a command
prompt window which then closes
instantly.
PSCP is a command-line application, not a GUI application.
If you run it without arguments, it will simply print a help
message and terminate.

To use PSCP properly, run it from a Command Prompt

window. See chapter 5 in the documentation for more
details.
A.6.9 How do I use PSCP to copy a file
whose name has spaces in?
If PSCP is using the traditional SCP protocol, this is
confusing. If you're specifying a file at the local end, you
just use one set of quotes as you would normally do:
pscp "local filename with spaces" user@host:
pscp user@host:myfile "local filename with spaces"

But if the filename you're specifying is on the remote side,

you have to use backslashes and two sets of quotes:
pscp user@host:"\"remote filename with spaces\"" local_filename
pscp local_filename user@host:"\"remote filename with spaces\""

Worse still, in a remote-to-local copy you have to specify

the local file name explicitly, otherwise PSCP will complain
that they don't match (unless you specified the -unsafe
option). The following command will give an error message:
c:\>pscp user@host:"\"oo er\"" .
warning: remote host tried to write to a file called 'oo er'
when we requested a file called '"oo er"'.

Instead, you need to specify the local file name in full:

c:\>pscp user@host:"\"oo er\"" "oo er"

If PSCP is using the newer SFTP protocol, none of this is a

problem, and all filenames with spaces in are specified
using a single pair of quotes in the obvious way:
pscp "local file" user@host:
pscp user@host:"remote file" .
A.6.10 Should I run the 32-bit or the
64-bit version?
If you're not sure, the 32-bit version is generally the safe
option. It will run perfectly well on all processors and on all
versions of Windows that PuTTY supports. PuTTY doesn't
require to run as a 64-bit application to work well, and
having a 32-bit PuTTY on a 64-bit system isn't likely to
cause you any trouble.

The 64-bit version (first released in 0.68) will only run if

you have a 64-bit processor and a 64-bit edition of Windows
(both of these things are likely to be true of any recent
Windows PC). It will run somewhat faster (in particular, the
cryptography will be faster, especially during link setup), but
it will consume slightly more memory.

If you need to use an external DLL for GSSAPI

authentication, that DLL may only be available in a 32-bit or
64-bit form, and that will dictate the version of PuTTY you
need to use. (You will probably know if you're doing this;
see section 4.24.2 in the documentation.)
A.7 Troubleshooting
A.7.1 Why do I see ‘Fatal: Protocol error: Expected
control record’ in PSCP?
A.7.2 I clicked on a colour in the Colours panel, and the
colour didn't change in my terminal.
A.7.3 After trying to establish an SSH-2 connection,
PuTTY says ‘Out of memory’ and dies.
A.7.4 When attempting a file transfer, either PSCP or
PSFTP says ‘Out of memory’ and dies.
A.7.5 PSFTP transfers files much slower than PSCP.
A.7.6 When I run full-colour applications, I see areas of
black space where colour ought to be, or vice versa.
A.7.7 When I change some terminal settings, nothing
happens.
A.7.8 My PuTTY sessions unexpectedly close after they
are idle for a while.
A.7.9 PuTTY's network connections time out too quickly
when network connectivity is temporarily lost.
A.7.10 When I cat a binary file, I get ‘PuTTYPuTTYPuTTY’
on my command line.
A.7.11 When I cat a binary file, my window title
changes to a nonsense string.
A.7.12 My keyboard stops working once PuTTY displays
the password prompt.
A.7.13 One or more function keys don't do what I
expected in a server-side application.
A.7.14 Why do I see ‘Couldn't load private key from ...’?
Why can PuTTYgen load my key but not PuTTY?
A.7.15 When I'm connected to a Red Hat Linux 8.0
system, some characters don't display properly.
A.7.16 Since I upgraded to PuTTY 0.54, the scrollback
has stopped working when I run screen.
A.7.17 Since I upgraded Windows XP to Service Pack 2,
I can't use addresses like 127.0.0.2.
A.7.18 PSFTP commands seem to be missing a directory
separator (slash).
A.7.19 Do you want to hear about ‘Software caused
connection abort’?
A.7.20 My SSH-2 session locks up for a few seconds
every so often.
A.7.21 PuTTY fails to start up. Windows claims that ‘the
application configuration is incorrect’.
A.7.22 When I put 32-bit PuTTY in C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32 on
my 64-bit Windows system, ‘Duplicate Session’ doesn't
work.
A.7.23 After I upgraded PuTTY to 0.68, I can no longer
connect to my embedded device or appliance.
A.7.1 Why do I see ‘Fatal: Protocol
error: Expected control record’ in
PSCP?
This happens because PSCP was expecting to see data from
the server that was part of the PSCP protocol exchange, and
instead it saw data that it couldn't make any sense of at all.

This almost always happens because the startup scripts in

your account on the server machine are generating output.
This is impossible for PSCP, or any other SCP client, to work
around. You should never use startup files (.bashrc, .cshrc
and so on) which generate output in non-interactive
sessions.

This is not actually a PuTTY problem. If PSCP fails in this

way, then all other SCP clients are likely to fail in exactly
the same way. The problem is at the server end.
A.7.2 I clicked on a colour in the
Colours panel, and the colour didn't
change in my terminal.
That isn't how you're supposed to use the Colours panel.

During the course of a session, PuTTY potentially uses all

the colours listed in the Colours panel. It's not a question of
using only one of them and you choosing which one; PuTTY
will use them all. The purpose of the Colours panel is to let
you adjust the appearance of all the colours. So to change
the colour of the cursor, for example, you would select
‘Cursor Colour’, press the ‘Modify’ button, and select a new
colour from the dialog box that appeared. Similarly, if you
want your session to appear in green, you should select
‘Default Foreground’ and press ‘Modify’. Clicking on ‘ANSI
Green’ won't turn your session green; it will only allow you
to adjust the shade of green used when PuTTY is instructed
by the server to display green text.
A.7.3 After trying to establish an SSH-
2 connection, PuTTY says ‘Out of
memory’ and dies.
If this happens just while the connection is starting up, this
often indicates that for some reason the client and server
have failed to establish a session encryption key. Somehow,
they have performed calculations that should have given
each of them the same key, but have ended up with
different keys; so data encrypted by one and decrypted by
the other looks like random garbage.

This causes an ‘out of memory’ error because the first

encrypted data PuTTY expects to see is the length of an
SSH message. Normally this will be something well under
100 bytes. If the decryption has failed, PuTTY will see a
completely random length in the region of two gigabytes,
and will try to allocate enough memory to store this non-
existent message. This will immediately lead to it thinking it
doesn't have enough memory, and panicking.

If this happens to you, it is quite likely to still be a PuTTY

bug and you should report it (although it might be a bug in
your SSH server instead); but it doesn't necessarily mean
you've actually run out of memory.
A.7.4 When attempting a file transfer,
either PSCP or PSFTP says ‘Out of
memory’ and dies.
This is almost always caused by your login scripts on the
server generating output. PSCP or PSFTP will receive that
output when they were expecting to see the start of a file
transfer protocol, and they will attempt to interpret the
output as file-transfer protocol. This will usually lead to an
‘out of memory’ error for much the same reasons as given
in question A.7.3.

This is a setup problem in your account on your server, not

a PSCP/PSFTP bug. Your login scripts should never generate
output during non-interactive sessions; secure file transfer
is not the only form of remote access that will break if they
do.

On Unix, a simple fix is to ensure that all the parts of your

login script that might generate output are in .profile (if
you use a Bourne shell derivative) or .login (if you use a C
shell). Putting them in more general files such as .bashrc or
.cshrc is liable to lead to problems.
A.7.5 PSFTP transfers files much
slower than PSCP.
The throughput of PSFTP 0.54 should be much better than
0.53b and prior; we've added code to the SFTP backend to
queue several blocks of data rather than waiting for an
acknowledgement for each. (The SCP backend did not suffer
from this performance issue because SCP is a much simpler
protocol.)
A.7.6 When I run full-colour
applications, I see areas of black
space where colour ought to be, or
vice versa.
You almost certainly need to change the ‘Use background
colour to erase screen’ setting in the Terminal panel. If
there is too much black space (the commoner situation),
you should enable it, while if there is too much colour, you
should disable it. (See section 4.3.5.)

In old versions of PuTTY, this was disabled by default, and

would not take effect until you reset the terminal (see
question A.7.7). Since 0.54, it is enabled by default, and
changes take effect immediately.
A.7.7 When I change some terminal
settings, nothing happens.
Some of the terminal options (notably Auto Wrap and
background-colour screen erase) actually represent the
default setting, rather than the currently active setting. The
server can send sequences that modify these options in
mid-session, but when the terminal is reset (by server
action, or by you choosing ‘Reset Terminal’ from the System
menu) the defaults are restored.

In versions 0.53b and prior, if you change one of these

options in the middle of a session, you will find that the
change does not immediately take effect. It will only take
effect once you reset the terminal.

In version 0.54, the behaviour has changed - changes to

these settings take effect immediately.
A.7.8 My PuTTY sessions
unexpectedly close after they are idle
for a while.
Some types of firewall, and almost any router doing
Network Address Translation (NAT, also known as IP
masquerading), will forget about a connection through them
if the connection does nothing for too long. This will cause
the connection to be rudely cut off when contact is
resumed.

You can try to combat this by telling PuTTY to send

keepalives: packets of data which have no effect on the
actual session, but which reassure the router or firewall that
the network connection is still active and worth
remembering about.

Keepalives don't solve everything, unfortunately; although

they cause greater robustness against this sort of router,
they can also cause a loss of robustness against network
dropouts. See section 4.14.1 in the documentation for more
discussion of this.
A.7.9 PuTTY's network connections
time out too quickly when network
connectivity is temporarily lost.
This is a Windows problem, not a PuTTY problem. The
timeout value can't be set on per application or per session
basis. To increase the TCP timeout globally, you need to
tinker with the Registry.

On Windows 95, 98 or ME, the registry key you need to

create or change is
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\VxD\
MSTCP\MaxDataRetries

(it must be of type DWORD in Win95, or String in

Win98/ME). (See MS Knowledge Base article 158474 for
more information.)

On Windows NT, 2000, or XP, the registry key to create or

change is
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\
Parameters\TcpMaxDataRetransmissions

and it must be of type DWORD. (See MS Knowledge Base

articles 120642 and 314053 for more information.)

Set the key's value to something like 10. This will cause
Windows to try harder to keep connections alive instead of
abandoning them.
A.7.10 When I cat a binary file, I get
‘PuTTYPuTTYPuTTY’ on my command
line.
Don't do that, then.

This is designed behaviour; when PuTTY receives the

character Control-E from the remote server, it interprets it
as a request to identify itself, and so it sends back the
string ‘PuTTY’ as if that string had been entered at the
keyboard. Control-E should only be sent by programs that
are prepared to deal with the response. Writing a binary file
to your terminal is likely to output many Control-E
characters, and cause this behaviour. Don't do it. It's a bad
plan.

To mitigate the effects, you could configure the answerback

string to be empty (see section 4.3.7); but writing binary
files to your terminal is likely to cause various other
unpleasant behaviour, so this is only a small remedy.
A.7.11 When I cat a binary file, my
window title changes to a nonsense
string.
Don't do that, then.

It is designed behaviour that PuTTY should have the ability

to adjust the window title on instructions from the server.
Normally the control sequence that does this should only be
sent deliberately, by programs that know what they are
doing and intend to put meaningful text in the window title.
Writing a binary file to your terminal runs the risk of
sending the same control sequence by accident, and cause
unexpected changes in the window title. Don't do it.
A.7.12 My keyboard stops working
once PuTTY displays the password
prompt.
No, it doesn't. PuTTY just doesn't display the password you
type, so that someone looking at your screen can't see what
it is.

Unlike the Windows login prompts, PuTTY doesn't display

the password as a row of asterisks either. This is so that
someone looking at your screen can't even tell how long
your password is, which might be valuable information.
A.7.13 One or more function keys
don't do what I expected in a server-
side application.
If you've already tried all the relevant options in the PuTTY
Keyboard panel, you may need to mail the PuTTY
maintainers and ask.

It is not usually helpful just to tell us which application,

which server operating system, and which key isn't
working; in order to replicate the problem we would need to
have a copy of every operating system, and every
application, that anyone has ever complained about.

PuTTY responds to function key presses by sending a

sequence of control characters to the server. If a function
key isn't doing what you expect, it's likely that the character
sequence your application is expecting to receive is not the
same as the one PuTTY is sending. Therefore what we really
need to know is what sequence the application is expecting.

The simplest way to investigate this is to find some other

terminal environment, in which that function key does
work; and then investigate what sequence the function key
is sending in that situation. One reasonably easy way to do
this on a Unix system is to type the command cat, and then
press the function key. This is likely to produce output of
the form ^[[11~. You can also do this in PuTTY, to find out
what sequence the function key is producing in that. Then
you can mail the PuTTY maintainers and tell us ‘I wanted
the F1 key to send ^[[11~, but instead it's sending ^[OP, can
this be done?’, or something similar.
You should still read the Feedback page on the PuTTY
website (also provided as appendix B in the manual), and
follow the guidelines contained in that.
A.7.14 Why do I see ‘Couldn't load
private key from ...’? Why can
PuTTYgen load my key but not
PuTTY?
It's likely that you've generated an SSH protocol 2 key with
PuTTYgen, but you're trying to use it in an SSH-1
connection. SSH-1 and SSH-2 keys have different formats,
and (at least in 0.52) PuTTY's reporting of a key in the
wrong format isn't optimal.

To connect using SSH-2 to a server that supports both

versions, you need to change the configuration from the
default (see question A.2.1).
A.7.15 When I'm connected to a Red
Hat Linux 8.0 system, some
characters don't display properly.
A common complaint is that hyphens in man pages show up
as a-acute.

With release 8.0, Red Hat appear to have made UTF-8 the
default character set. There appears to be no way for
terminal emulators such as PuTTY to know this (as far as we
know, the appropriate escape sequence to switch into UTF-8
mode isn't sent).

A fix is to configure sessions to RH8 systems to use UTF-8

translation - see section 4.10.1 in the documentation. (Note
that if you use ‘Change Settings’, changes may not take
place immediately - see question A.7.7.)

If you really want to change the character set used by the

server, the right place is /etc/sysconfig/i18n, but this
shouldn't be necessary.
A.7.16 Since I upgraded to PuTTY
0.54, the scrollback has stopped
working when I run screen.
PuTTY's terminal emulator has always had the policy that
when the ‘alternate screen’ is in use, nothing is added to
the scrollback. This is because the usual sorts of programs
which use the alternate screen are things like text editors,
which tend to scroll back and forth in the same document a
lot; so (a) they would fill up the scrollback with a large
amount of unhelpfully disordered text, and (b) they contain
their own method for the user to scroll back to the bit they
were interested in. We have generally found this policy to
do the Right Thing in almost all situations.

Unfortunately, screen is one exception: it uses the alternate

screen, but it's still usually helpful to have PuTTY's
scrollback continue working. The simplest solution is to go
to the Features control panel and tick ‘Disable switching to
alternate terminal screen’. (See section 4.6.4 for more
details.) Alternatively, you can tell screen itself not to use
the alternate screen: the screen FAQ suggests adding the
line ‘termcapinfo xterm ti@:te@’ to your .screenrc file.

The reason why this only started to be a problem in 0.54 is

because screen typically uses an unusual control sequence
to switch to the alternate screen, and previous versions of
PuTTY did not support this sequence.
A.7.17 Since I upgraded Windows XP
to Service Pack 2, I can't use
addresses like 127.0.0.2.
Some people who ask PuTTY to listen on localhost
addresses other than 127.0.0.1 to forward services such as
SMB and Windows Terminal Services have found that doing
so no longer works since they upgraded to WinXP SP2.

This is apparently an issue with SP2 that is acknowledged

by Microsoft in MS Knowledge Base article 884020. The
article links to a fix you can download.

(However, we've been told that SP2 also fixes the bug that
means you need to use non-127.0.0.1 addresses to forward
Terminal Services in the first place.)
A.7.18 PSFTP commands seem to be
missing a directory separator (slash).
Some people have reported the following incorrect
behaviour with PSFTP:
psftp> pwd
Remote directory is /dir1/dir2
psftp> get filename.ext
/dir1/dir2filename.ext: no such file or directory

This is not a bug in PSFTP. There is a known bug in some

versions of portable OpenSSH (bug 697) that causes these
symptoms; it appears to have been introduced around
3.7.x. It manifests only on certain platforms (AIX is what
has been reported to us).

There is a patch for OpenSSH attached to that bug; it's also

fixed in recent versions of portable OpenSSH (from around
3.8).
A.7.19 Do you want to hear about
‘Software caused connection abort’?
In the documentation for PuTTY 0.53 and 0.53b, we
mentioned that we'd like to hear about any occurrences of
this error. Since the release of PuTTY 0.54, however, we've
been convinced that this error doesn't indicate that PuTTY's
doing anything wrong, and we don't need to hear about
further occurrences. See section 10.15 for our current
documentation of this error.
A.7.20 My SSH-2 session locks up for
a few seconds every so often.
Recent versions of PuTTY automatically initiate repeat key
exchange once per hour, to improve session security. If your
client or server machine is slow, you may experience this as
a delay of anything up to thirty seconds or so.

These delays are inconvenient, but they are there for your
protection. If they really cause you a problem, you can
choose to turn off periodic rekeying using the ‘Kex’
configuration panel (see section 4.20), but be aware that
you will be sacrificing security for this. (Falling back to SSH-
1 would also remove the delays, but would lose a lot more
security still. We do not recommend it.)
A.7.21 PuTTY fails to start up.
Windows claims that ‘the application
configuration is incorrect’.
This is caused by a bug in certain versions of Windows XP
which is triggered by PuTTY 0.58. This was fixed in 0.59.
The ‘xp-wont-run’ entry in PuTTY's wishlist has more
details.
A.7.22 When I put 32-bit PuTTY in
C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32 on my 64-bit
Windows system, ‘Duplicate Session’
doesn't work.
The short answer is not to put the PuTTY executables in that
location.

On 64-bit systems, C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32 is intended to contain

only 64-bit binaries; Windows' 32-bit binaries live in
C:\WINDOWS\SYSWOW64. When a 32-bit PuTTY executable runs on
a 64-bit system, it cannot by default see the ‘real’
C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32 at all, because the File System Redirector
arranges that the running program sees the appropriate
kind of binaries in SYSTEM32. Thus, operations in the PuTTY
suite that involve it accessing its own executables, such as
‘New Session’ and ‘Duplicate Session’, will not work.
A.7.23 After I upgraded PuTTY to
0.68, I can no longer connect to my
embedded device or appliance.
If your SSH server has started unexpectedly closing SSH
connections after you enter your password, and it worked
before 0.68, you may have a buggy server that objects to
certain SSH protocol extensions.

The SSH protocol recently gained a new ‘terminal mode’,

IUTF8, which PuTTY sends by default; see section 4.25.2.
This is the first new terminal mode since the SSH-2 protocol
was defined. While servers are supposed to ignore modes
they don't know about, some buggy servers will
unceremoniously close the connection if they see anything
they don't recognise. SSH servers in embedded devices,
network appliances, and the like seem to disproportionately
have this bug.

If you think you have such a server, from 0.69 onwards you
can disable sending of the IUTF8 mode: on the SSH / TTY
panel, select IUTF8 on the list, select ‘Nothing’, and press
‘Set’. (It's not possible to disable sending this mode in
0.68.)
A.8 Security questions
A.8.1 Is it safe for me to download PuTTY and use it on
a public PC?
A.8.2 What does PuTTY leave on a system? How can I
clean up after it?
A.8.3 How come PuTTY now supports DSA, when the
website used to say how insecure it was?
A.8.4 Couldn't Pageant use VirtualLock() to stop private
keys being written to disk?
A.8.1 Is it safe for me to download
PuTTY and use it on a public PC?
It depends on whether you trust that PC. If you don't trust
the public PC, don't use PuTTY on it, and don't use any
other software you plan to type passwords into either. It
might be watching your keystrokes, or it might tamper with
the PuTTY binary you download. There is no program safe
enough that you can run it on an actively malicious PC and
get away with typing passwords into it.

If you do trust the PC, then it's probably OK to use PuTTY

on it (but if you don't trust the network, then the PuTTY
download might be tampered with, so it would be better to
carry PuTTY with you on a USB stick).
A.8.2 What does PuTTY leave on a
system? How can I clean up after it?
PuTTY will leave some Registry entries, and a random seed
file, on the PC (see question A.5.2). Windows 7 and up also
remember some information about recently launched
sessions for the ‘jump list’ feature.

If you are using PuTTY on a public PC, or somebody else's

PC, you might want to clean this information up when you
leave. You can do that automatically, by running the
command putty -cleanup. See section 3.8.2 in the
documentation for more detail. (Note that this only removes
settings for the currently logged-in user on multi-user
systems.)

If PuTTY was installed from the installer package, it will also

appear in ‘Add/Remove Programs’. Current versions of the
installer do not offer to remove the above-mentioned items,
so if you want them removed you should run putty -cleanup
before uninstalling.
A.8.3 How come PuTTY now supports
DSA, when the website used to say
how insecure it was?
DSA has a major weakness if badly implemented: it relies
on a random number generator to far too great an extent. If
the random number generator produces a number an
attacker can predict, the DSA private key is exposed -
meaning that the attacker can log in as you on all systems
that accept that key.

The PuTTY policy changed because the developers were

informed of ways to implement DSA which do not suffer
nearly as badly from this weakness, and indeed which don't
need to rely on random numbers at all. For this reason we
now believe PuTTY's DSA implementation is probably OK.

The recently added elliptic-curve signature methods are also

DSA-style algorithms, so they have this same weakness in
principle. Our ECDSA implementation uses the same
defence as DSA, while our Ed25519 implementation uses
the similar system (but different in details) that the
Ed25519 spec mandates.
A.8.4 Couldn't Pageant use
VirtualLock() to stop private keys being
written to disk?
Unfortunately not. The VirtualLock() function in the Windows
API doesn't do a proper job: it may prevent small pieces of
a process's memory from being paged to disk while the
process is running, but it doesn't stop the process's memory
as a whole from being swapped completely out to disk when
the process is long-term inactive. And Pageant spends most
of its time inactive.
A.9 Administrative questions
A.9.1 Would you like me to register you a nicer domain
name?
A.9.2 Would you like free web hosting for the PuTTY
web site?
A.9.3 Would you link to my web site from the PuTTY
web site?
A.9.4 Why don't you move PuTTY to SourceForge?
A.9.5 Why can't I subscribe to the putty-bugs mailing
list?
A.9.6 If putty-bugs isn't a general-subscription mailing
list, what is?
A.9.7 How can I donate to PuTTY development?
A.9.8 Can I have permission to put PuTTY on a cover
disk / distribute it with other software / etc?
A.9.9 Can you sign an agreement indemnifying us
against security problems in PuTTY?
A.9.10 Can you sign this form granting us permission to
use/distribute PuTTY?
A.9.11 Can you write us a formal notice of permission to
use PuTTY?
A.9.12 Can you sign anything for us?
A.9.13 If you won't sign anything, can you give us some
sort of assurance that you won't make PuTTY closed-
source in future?
A.9.14 Can you provide us with export control
information / FIPS certification for PuTTY?
A.9.15 As one of our existing software vendors, can you
just fill in this questionnaire for us?
A.9.16 The sha1sums / sha256sums / etc files on your
download page don't match the binaries.
A.9.1 Would you like me to register
you a nicer domain name?
No, thank you. Even if you can find one (most of them seem
to have been registered already, by people who didn't ask
whether we actually wanted it before they applied), we're
happy with the PuTTY web site being exactly where it is. It's
not hard to find (just type ‘putty’ into google.com and we're
the first link returned), and we don't believe the
administrative hassle of moving the site would be worth the
benefit.

In addition, if we did want a custom domain name, we

would want to run it ourselves, so we knew for certain that
it would continue to point where we wanted it, and wouldn't
suddenly change or do strange things. Having it registered
for us by a third party who we don't even know is not the
best way to achieve this.
A.9.2 Would you like free web hosting
for the PuTTY web site?
We already have some, thanks.
A.9.3 Would you link to my web site
from the PuTTY web site?
Only if the content of your web page is of definite direct
interest to PuTTY users. If your content is unrelated, or only
tangentially related, to PuTTY, then the link would simply be
advertising for you.

One very nice effect of the Google ranking mechanism is

that by and large, the most popular web sites get the
highest rankings. This means that when an ordinary person
does a search, the top item in the search is very likely to be
a high-quality site or the site they actually wanted, rather
than the site which paid the most money for its ranking.

The PuTTY web site is held in high esteem by Google, for

precisely this reason: lots of people have linked to it simply
because they like PuTTY, without us ever having to ask
anyone to link to us. We feel that it would be an abuse of
this esteem to use it to boost the ranking of random
advertisers' web sites. If you want your web site to have a
high Google ranking, we'd prefer that you achieve this the
way we did - by being good enough at what you do that
people will link to you simply because they like you.

In particular, we aren't interested in trading links for money

(see above), and we certainly aren't interested in trading
links for other links (since we have no advertising on our
web site, our Google ranking is not even directly worth
anything to us). If we don't want to link to you for free,
then we probably won't want to link to you at all.

If you have software based on PuTTY, or specifically

designed to interoperate with PuTTY, or in some other way
of genuine interest to PuTTY users, then we will probably be
happy to add a link to you on our Links page. And if you're
running a particularly valuable mirror of the PuTTY web site,
we might be interested in linking to you from our Mirrors
page.
A.9.4 Why don't you move PuTTY to
SourceForge?
Partly, because we don't want to move the web site location
(see question A.9.1).

Also, security reasons. PuTTY is a security product, and as

such it is particularly important to guard the code and the
web site against unauthorised modifications which might
introduce subtle security flaws. Therefore, we prefer that
the Git repository, web site and FTP site remain where they
are, under the direct control of system administrators we
know and trust personally, rather than being run by a large
organisation full of people we've never met and which is
known to have had breakins in the past.

No offence to SourceForge; I think they do a wonderful job.

But they're not ideal for everyone, and in particular they're
not ideal for us.
A.9.5 Why can't I subscribe to the
putty-bugs mailing list?
Because you're not a member of the PuTTY core
development team. The putty-bugs mailing list is not a
general newsgroup-like discussion forum; it's a contact
address for the core developers, and an internal mailing list
for us to discuss things among ourselves. If we opened it up
for everybody to subscribe to, it would turn into something
more like a newsgroup and we would be completely
overwhelmed by the volume of traffic. It's hard enough to
keep up with the list as it is.
A.9.6 If putty-bugs isn't a general-
subscription mailing list, what is?
There isn't one, that we know of.

If someone else wants to set up a mailing list or other

forum for PuTTY users to help each other with common
problems, that would be fine with us, though the PuTTY
team would almost certainly not have the time to read it.
It's probably better to use one of the established
newsgroups for this purpose (see section B.1.2).
A.9.7 How can I donate to PuTTY
development?
Please, please don't feel you have to. PuTTY is completely
free software, and not shareware. We think it's very
important that everybody who wants to use PuTTY should
be able to, whether they have any money or not; so the last
thing we would want is for a PuTTY user to feel guilty
because they haven't paid us any money. If you want to
keep your money, please do keep it. We wouldn't dream of
asking for any.

Having said all that, if you still really want to give us

money, we won't argue :-) The easiest way for us to accept
donations is if you send money to <[email protected]> using
PayPal (www.paypal.com). If you don't like PayPal, talk to us;
we can probably arrange some alternative means.

Small donations (tens of dollars or tens of euros) will

probably be spent on beer or curry, which helps motivate
our volunteer team to continue doing this for the world.
Larger donations will be spent on something that actually
helps development, if we can find anything (perhaps new
hardware, or a copy of Windows XP), but if we can't find
anything then we'll just distribute the money among the
developers. If you want to be sure your donation is going
towards something worthwhile, ask us first. If you don't like
these terms, feel perfectly free not to donate. We don't
mind.
A.9.8 Can I have permission to put
PuTTY on a cover disk / distribute it
with other software / etc?
Yes. For most things, you need not bother asking us
explicitly for permission; our licence already grants you
permission.

See section B.8 for more details.

A.9.9 Can you sign an agreement
indemnifying us against security
problems in PuTTY?
No!

A vendor of physical security products (e.g. locks) might

plausibly be willing to accept financial liability for a product
that failed to perform as advertised and resulted in damage
(e.g. valuables being stolen). The reason they can afford to
do this is because they sell a lot of units, and only a small
proportion of them will fail; so they can meet their financial
liability out of the income from all the rest of their sales,
and still have enough left over to make a profit. Financial
liability is intrinsically linked to selling your product for
money.

There are two reasons why PuTTY is not analogous to a

physical lock in this context. One is that software products
don't exhibit random variation: if PuTTY has a security hole
(which does happen, although we do our utmost to prevent
it and to respond quickly when it does), every copy of
PuTTY will have the same hole, so it's likely to affect all the
users at the same time. So even if our users were all paying
us to use PuTTY, we wouldn't be able to simultaneously pay
every affected user compensation in excess of the amount
they had paid us in the first place. It just wouldn't work.

The second, much more important, reason is that PuTTY

users don't pay us. The PuTTY team does not have an
income; it's a volunteer effort composed of people spending
their spare time to try to write useful software. We aren't
even a company or any kind of legally recognised
organisation. We're just a bunch of people who happen to
do some stuff in our spare time.

Therefore, to ask us to assume financial liability is to ask us

to assume a risk of having to pay it out of our own personal
pockets: out of the same budget from which we buy food
and clothes and pay our rent. That's more than we're willing
to give. We're already giving a lot of our spare time to
developing software for free; if we had to pay our own
money to do it as well, we'd start to wonder why we were
bothering.

Free software fundamentally does not work on the basis of

financial guarantees. Your guarantee of the software
functioning correctly is simply that you have the source
code and can check it before you use it. If you want to be
sure there aren't any security holes, do a security audit of
the PuTTY code, or hire a security engineer if you don't have
the necessary skills yourself: instead of trying to ensure you
can get compensation in the event of a disaster, try to
ensure there isn't a disaster in the first place.

If you really want financial security, see if you can find a

security engineer who will take financial responsibility for
the correctness of their review. (This might be less likely to
suffer from the everything-failing-at-once problem
mentioned above, because such an engineer would probably
be reviewing a lot of different products which would tend to
fail independently.) Failing that, see if you can persuade an
insurance company to insure you against security incidents,
and if the insurer demands it as a condition then get our
code reviewed by a security engineer they're happy with.
A.9.10 Can you sign this form
granting us permission to
use/distribute PuTTY?
If your form contains any clause along the lines of ‘the
undersigned represents and warrants’, we're not going to
sign it. This is particularly true if it asks us to warrant that
PuTTY is secure; see question A.9.9 for more discussion of
this. But it doesn't really matter what we're supposed to be
warranting: even if it's something we already believe is
true, such as that we don't infringe any third-party
copyright, we will not sign a document accepting any legal
or financial liability. This is simply because the PuTTY
development project has no income out of which to satisfy
that liability, or pay legal costs, should it become necessary.
We cannot afford to be sued. We are assuring you that we
have done our best; if that isn't good enough for you,
tough.

The existing PuTTY licence document already gives you

permission to use or distribute PuTTY in pretty much any
way which does not involve pretending you wrote it or suing
us if it goes wrong. We think that really ought to be enough
for anybody.

See also question A.9.12 for another reason why we don't

want to do this sort of thing.
A.9.11 Can you write us a formal
notice of permission to use PuTTY?
We could, in principle, but it isn't clear what use it would be.
If you think there's a serious chance of one of the PuTTY
copyright holders suing you (which we don't!), you would
presumably want a signed notice from all of them; and we
couldn't provide that even if we wanted to, because many of
the copyright holders are people who contributed some
code in the past and with whom we subsequently lost
contact. Therefore the best we would be able to do even in
theory would be to have the core development team sign
the document, which wouldn't guarantee you that some
other copyright holder might not sue.

See also question A.9.12 for another reason why we don't

want to do this sort of thing.
A.9.12 Can you sign anything for us?
Not unless there's an incredibly good reason.

We are generally unwilling to set a precedent that involves

us having to enter into individual agreements with PuTTY
users. We estimate that we have literally millions of users,
and we absolutely would not have time to go round signing
specific agreements with every one of them. So if you want
us to sign something specific for you, you might usefully
stop to consider whether there's anything special that
distinguishes you from 999,999 other users, and therefore
any reason we should be willing to sign something for you
without it setting such a precedent.

If your company policy requires you to have an individual

agreement with the supplier of any software you use, then
your company policy is simply not well suited to using
popular free software, and we urge you to consider this as a
flaw in your policy.
A.9.13 If you won't sign anything, can
you give us some sort of assurance
that you won't make PuTTY closed-
source in future?
Yes and no.

If what you want is an assurance that some current version

of PuTTY which you've already downloaded will remain free,
then you already have that assurance: it's called the PuTTY
Licence. It grants you permission to use, distribute and
copy the software to which it applies; once we've granted
that permission (which we have), we can't just revoke it.

On the other hand, if you want an assurance that future

versions of PuTTY won't be closed-source, that's more
difficult. We could in principle sign a document stating that
we would never release a closed-source PuTTY, but that
wouldn't assure you that we would keep releasing open-
source PuTTYs: we would still have the option of ceasing to
develop PuTTY at all, which would surely be even worse for
you than making it closed-source! (And we almost certainly
wouldn't want to sign a document guaranteeing that we
would actually continue to do development work on PuTTY;
we certainly wouldn't sign it for free. Documents like that
are called contracts of employment, and are generally not
signed except in return for a sizeable salary.)

If we were to stop developing PuTTY, or to decide to make

all future releases closed-source, then you would still be
free to copy the last open release in accordance with the
current licence, and in particular you could start your own
fork of the project from that release. If this happened, I
confidently predict that somebody would do that, and that
some kind of a free PuTTY would continue to be developed.
There's already precedent for that sort of thing happening
in free software. We can't guarantee that somebody other
than you would do it, of course; you might have to do it
yourself. But we can assure you that there would be nothing
preventing anyone from continuing free development if we
stopped.

(Finally, we can also confidently predict that if we made

PuTTY closed-source and someone made an open-source
fork, most people would switch to the latter. Therefore, it
would be pretty stupid of us to try it.)
A.9.14 Can you provide us with export
control information / FIPS
certification for PuTTY?
Some people have asked us for an Export Control
Classification Number (ECCN) for PuTTY. We don't know
whether we have one, and as a team of free software
developers based in the UK we don't have the time, money,
or effort to deal with US bureaucracy to investigate any
further. We believe that PuTTY falls under 5D002 on the US
Commerce Control List, but that shouldn't be taken as
definitive. If you need to know more you should seek
professional legal advice. The same applies to any other
country's legal requirements and restrictions.

Similarly, some people have asked us for FIPS certification

of the PuTTY tools. Unless someone else is prepared to do
the necessary work and pay any costs, we can't provide
this.
A.9.15 As one of our existing
software vendors, can you just fill in
this questionnaire for us?
We periodically receive requests like this, from
organisations which have apparently sent out a form letter
to everyone listed in their big spreadsheet of ‘software
vendors’ requiring them all to answer some long list of
questions about supported OS versions, paid support
arrangements, compliance with assorted local regulations
we haven't heard of, contact phone numbers, and other
such administrivia. Many of the questions are obviously
meaningless when applied to PuTTY (we don't provide any
paid support in the first place!), most of the rest could have
been answered with only a very quick look at our website,
and some we are actively unwilling to answer (we are
private individuals, why would we want to give out our
home phone numbers to large corporations?).

We don't make a habit of responding in full to these

questionnaires, because we are not a software vendor.

A software vendor is a company to which you are paying

lots of money in return for some software. They know who
you are, and they know you're paying them money; so they
have an incentive to fill in your forms and questionnaires, to
research any local regulations you cite if they don't already
know about them, and generally to provide every scrap of
information you might possibly need in the most convenient
manner for you, because they want to keep being paid.

But we are a team of free software developers, and that

means your relationship with us is nothing like that at all. If
you once downloaded our software from our website, that's
great and we hope you found it useful, but it doesn't mean
we have the least idea who you are, or any incentive to do
lots of unpaid work to support our ‘relationship’ with you.

It's not that we are unwilling to provide information. We put

as much of it as we can on our website for your
convenience, and if you actually need to know some fact
about PuTTY which you haven't been able to find on the
website (and which is not obviously inapplicable to free
software in the first place) then please do ask us, and we'll
try to answer as best we can. But we put up the website
and this FAQ precisely so that we don't have to keep
answering the same questions over and over again, so we
aren't prepared to fill in completely generic form-letter
questionnaires for people who haven't done their best to
find the answers here first.

If you work for an organisation which you think might be at

risk of making this mistake, we urge you to reorganise your
list of software suppliers so that it clearly distinguishes paid
vendors who know about you from free software developers
who don't have any idea who you are. Then, only send out
these mass mailings to the former.
A.9.16 The sha1sums / sha256sums / etc
files on your download page don't
match the binaries.
People report this every so often, and usually the reason
turns out to be that they've matched up the wrong
checksums file with the wrong binaries.

The PuTTY download page contains more than one version

of the software. There's a latest release version; there are
the development snapshots; and when we're in the run-up
to making a release, there are also pre-release builds of the
upcoming new version. Each one has its own collection of
binaries, and its own collection of checksums files to go with
them.

So if you've downloaded the release version of the actual

program, you need the release version of the checksums
too, otherwise you will see a mismatch. Similarly, the
development snapshot binaries go with the development
snapshot checksums, and so on. (We've colour-coded the
download page in an effort to reduce this confusion a bit.)

Another thing to watch out for: as of 0.71, executables like

putty.exe come in two flavours for each platform: the
standalone versions on the website, each of which contains
embedded help, and the versions installed by the installer,
which use a separate help file also in the installer. We
provide checksums for both; the latter are indicated with
‘(installer version)’ after the filename.

If you have double-checked all that, and you still think

there's a real mismatch, then please send us a report
carefully quoting everything relevant:
the exact URL you got your binary from
the checksum of the binary after you downloaded
the exact URL you got your checksums file from
the checksum that file says the binary should have.
A.10 Miscellaneous questions
A.10.1 Is PuTTY a port of OpenSSH, or based on
OpenSSH or OpenSSL?
A.10.2 Where can I buy silly putty?
A.10.3 What does ‘PuTTY’ mean?
A.10.4 How do I pronounce ‘PuTTY’?
A.10.1 Is PuTTY a port of OpenSSH, or
based on OpenSSH or OpenSSL?
No, it isn't. PuTTY is almost completely composed of code
written from scratch for PuTTY. The only code we share with
OpenSSH is the detector for SSH-1 CRC compensation
attacks, written by CORE SDI S.A; we share no code at all
with OpenSSL.
A.10.2 Where can I buy silly putty?
You're looking at the wrong web site; the only PuTTY we
know about here is the name of a computer program.

If you want the kind of putty you can buy as an executive

toy, the PuTTY team can personally recommend Thinking
Putty, which you can buy from Crazy Aaron's Putty World, at
www.puttyworld.com.
A.10.3 What does ‘PuTTY’ mean?
It's the name of a popular SSH and Telnet client. Any other
meaning is in the eye of the beholder. It's been rumoured
that ‘PuTTY’ is the antonym of ‘getty’, or that it's the stuff
that makes your Windows useful, or that it's a kind of
plutonium Teletype. We couldn't possibly comment on such
allegations.
A.10.4 How do I pronounce ‘PuTTY’?
Exactly like the English word ‘putty’, which we pronounce /
ˈpʌti/.
Appendix B: Feedback and bug
reporting
This is a guide to providing feedback to the PuTTY
development team. It is provided as both a web page on
the PuTTY site, and an appendix in the PuTTY manual.

Section B.1 gives some general guidelines for sending any

kind of e-mail to the development team. Following sections
give more specific guidelines for particular types of e-mail,
such as bug reports and feature requests.

B.1 General guidelines

B.1.1 Sending large attachments
B.1.2 Other places to ask for help
B.2 Reporting bugs
B.3 Reporting security vulnerabilities
B.4 Requesting extra features
B.5 Requesting features that have already been
requested
B.6 Support requests
B.7 Web server administration
B.8 Asking permission for things
B.9 Mirroring the PuTTY web site
B.10 Praise and compliments
B.11 E-mail address
B.1 General guidelines
The PuTTY development team gets a lot of mail. If you can
possibly solve your own problem by reading the manual,
reading the FAQ, reading the web site, asking a fellow user,
perhaps posting to a newsgroup (see section B.1.2), or
some other means, then it would make our lives much
easier.

We get so much e-mail that we literally do not have time to

answer it all. We regret this, but there's nothing we can do
about it. So if you can possibly avoid sending mail to the
PuTTY team, we recommend you do so. In particular,
support requests (section B.6) are probably better sent to
newsgroups, or passed to a local expert if possible.

The PuTTY contact email address is a private mailing list

containing four or five core developers. Don't be put off by
it being a mailing list: if you need to send confidential data
as part of a bug report, you can trust the people on the list
to respect that confidence. Also, the archives aren't publicly
available, so you shouldn't be letting yourself in for any
spam by sending us mail.

Please use a meaningful subject line on your message. We

get a lot of mail, and it's hard to find the message we're
looking for if they all have subject lines like ‘PuTTY bug’.

B.1.1 Sending large attachments

B.1.2 Other places to ask for help
B.1.1 Sending large attachments
Since the PuTTY contact address is a mailing list, e-mails
larger than 40Kb will be held for inspection by the list
administrator, and will not be allowed through unless they
really appear to be worth their large size.

If you are considering sending any kind of large data file to

the PuTTY team, it's almost always a bad idea, or at the
very least it would be better to ask us first whether we
actually need the file. Alternatively, you could put the file on
a web site and just send us the URL; that way, we don't
have to download it unless we decide we actually need it,
and only one of us needs to download it instead of it being
automatically copied to all the developers.

(If the file contains confidential information, then you could

encrypt it with our Secure Contact Key; see section E.1 for
details.)

Some people like to send mail in MS Word format. Please

don't send us bug reports, or any other mail, as a Word
document. Word documents are roughly fifty times larger
than writing the same report in plain text. In addition, most
of the PuTTY team read their e-mail on Unix machines, so
copying the file to a Windows box to run Word is very
inconvenient. Not only that, but several of us don't even
have a copy of Word!

Some people like to send us screen shots when

demonstrating a problem. Please don't do this without
checking with us first - we almost never actually need the
information in the screen shot. Sending a screen shot of an
error box is almost certainly unnecessary when you could
just tell us in plain text what the error was. (On some
versions of Windows, pressing Ctrl-C when the error box is
displayed will copy the text of the message to the
clipboard.) Sending a full-screen shot is occasionally useful,
but it's probably still wise to check whether we need it
before sending it.

If you must mail a screen shot, don't send it as a .BMP file.

BMPs have no compression and they are much larger than
other image formats such as PNG, TIFF and GIF. Convert
the file to a properly compressed image format before
sending it.

Please don't mail us executables, at all. Our mail server

blocks all incoming e-mail containing executables, as a
defence against the vast numbers of e-mail viruses we
receive every day. If you mail us an executable, it will just
bounce.

If you have made a tiny modification to the PuTTY code,

please send us a patch to the source code if possible, rather
than sending us a huge .ZIP file containing the complete
sources plus your modification. If you've only changed 10
lines, we'd prefer to receive a mail that's 30 lines long than
one containing multiple megabytes of data we already have.
B.1.2 Other places to ask for help
There are two Usenet newsgroups that are particularly
relevant to the PuTTY tools:

comp.security.ssh, for questions specific to using the SSH

protocol;
comp.terminals, for issues relating to terminal emulation
(for instance, keyboard problems).

Please use the newsgroup most appropriate to your query,

and remember that these are general newsgroups, not
specifically about PuTTY.

If you don't have direct access to Usenet, you can access

these newsgroups through Google Groups
(groups.google.com).
B.2 Reporting bugs
If you think you have found a bug in PuTTY, your first steps
should be:

Check the Wishlist page on the PuTTY website, and see

if we already know about the problem. If we do, it is
almost certainly not necessary to mail us about it,
unless you think you have extra information that might
be helpful to us in fixing it. (Of course, if we actually
need specific extra information about a particular bug,
the Wishlist page will say so.)
Check the Change Log on the PuTTY website, and see if
we have already fixed the bug in the development
snapshots.
Check the FAQ on the PuTTY website (also provided as
appendix A in the manual), and see if it answers your
question. The FAQ lists the most common things which
people think are bugs, but which aren't bugs.
Download the latest development snapshot and see if
the problem still happens with that. This really is worth
doing. As a general rule we aren't very interested in
bugs that appear in the release version but not in the
development version, because that usually means they
are bugs we have already fixed. On the other hand, if
you can find a bug in the development version that
doesn't appear in the release, that's likely to be a new
bug we've introduced since the release and we're
definitely interested in it.

If none of those options solved your problem, and you still

need to report a bug to us, it is useful if you include some
general information:
Tell us what version of PuTTY you are running. To find
this out, use the ‘About PuTTY’ option from the System
menu. Please do not just tell us ‘I'm running the latest
version’; e-mail can be delayed and it may not be
obvious which version was the latest at the time you
sent the message.
PuTTY is a multi-platform application; tell us what
version of what OS you are running PuTTY on. (If you're
running on Unix, or Windows for Arm, tell us, or we'll
assume you're running on Windows for Intel as this is
overwhelmingly the case.)
Tell us what protocol you are connecting with: SSH,
Telnet, Rlogin, or Raw mode, or a serial connection.
Tell us what kind of server you are connecting to; what
OS, and if possible what SSH server (if you're using
SSH). You can get some of this information from the
PuTTY Event Log (see section 3.1.3.1 in the manual).
Send us the contents of the PuTTY Event Log, unless
you have a specific reason not to (for example, if it
contains confidential information that you think we
should be able to solve your problem without needing to
know).
Try to give us as much information as you can to help
us see the problem for ourselves. If possible, give us a
step-by-step sequence of precise instructions for
reproducing the fault.
Don't just tell us that PuTTY ‘does the wrong thing’; tell
us exactly and precisely what it did, and also tell us
exactly and precisely what you think it should have
done instead. Some people tell us PuTTY does the
wrong thing, and it turns out that it was doing the right
thing and their expectations were wrong. Help to avoid
this problem by telling us exactly what you think it
should have done, and exactly what it did do.
If you think you can, you're welcome to try to fix the
problem yourself. A patch to the code which fixes a bug
 is an excellent addition to a bug report. However, a
patch is never a substitute for a good bug report; if
your patch is wrong or inappropriate, and you haven't
supplied us with full information about the actual bug,
then we won't be able to find a better solution.
https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/bugs.html is
an article on how to report bugs effectively in general. If
your bug report is particularly unclear, we may ask you
to go away, read this article, and then report the bug
again.

It is reasonable to report bugs in PuTTY's documentation, if

you think the documentation is unclear or unhelpful. But we
do need to be given exact details of what you think the
documentation has failed to tell you, or how you think it
could be made clearer. If your problem is simply that you
don't understand the documentation, we suggest posting to
a newsgroup (see section B.1.2) and seeing if someone will
explain what you need to know. Then, if you think the
documentation could usefully have told you that, send us a
bug report and explain how you think we should change it.
B.3 Reporting security vulnerabilities
If you've found a security vulnerability in PuTTY, you might
well want to notify us using an encrypted communications
channel, to avoid disclosing information about the
vulnerability before a fixed release is available.

For this purpose, we provide a GPG key suitable for

encryption: the Secure Contact Key. See section E.1 for
details of this.

(Of course, vulnerabilities are also bugs, so please do

include as much information as possible about them, the
same way you would with any other bug report.)
B.4 Requesting extra features
If you want to request a new feature in PuTTY, the very first
things you should do are:

Check the Wishlist page on the PuTTY website, and see

if your feature is already on the list. If it is, it probably
won't achieve very much to repeat the request. (But see
section B.5 if you want to persuade us to give your
particular feature higher priority.)
Check the Wishlist and Change Log on the PuTTY
website, and see if we have already added your feature
in the development snapshots. If it isn't clear, download
the latest development snapshot and see if the feature
is present. If it is, then it will also be in the next release
and there is no need to mail us at all.

If you can't find your feature in either the development

snapshots or the Wishlist, then you probably do need to
submit a feature request. Since the PuTTY authors are very
busy, it helps if you try to do some of the work for us:

Do as much of the design as you can. Think about

‘corner cases’; think about how your feature interacts
with other existing features. Think about the user
interface; if you can't come up with a simple and
intuitive interface to your feature, you shouldn't be
surprised if we can't either. Always imagine whether it's
possible for there to be more than one, or less than
one, of something you'd assumed there would be one
of. (For example, if you were to want PuTTY to put an
icon in the System tray rather than the Taskbar, you
should think about what happens if there's more than
one PuTTY active; how would the user tell which was
which?)
If you can program, it may be worth offering to write
the feature yourself and send us a patch. However, it is
likely to be helpful if you confer with us first; there may
be design issues you haven't thought of, or we may be
about to make big changes to the code which your
patch would clash with, or something. If you check with
the maintainers first, there is a better chance of your
code actually being usable. Also, read the design
principles listed in appendix D: if you do not conform to
them, we will probably not be able to accept your patch.
B.5 Requesting features that have
already been requested
If a feature is already listed on the Wishlist, then it usually
means we would like to add it to PuTTY at some point.
However, this may not be in the near future. If there's a
feature on the Wishlist which you would like to see in the
near future, there are several things you can do to try to
increase its priority level:

Mail us and vote for it. (Be sure to mention that you've
seen it on the Wishlist, or we might think you haven't
even read the Wishlist). This probably won't have very
much effect; if a huge number of people vote for
something then it may make a difference, but one or
two extra votes for a particular feature are unlikely to
change our priority list immediately. Offering a new and
compelling justification might help. Also, don't expect a
reply.
Offer us money if we do the work sooner rather than
later. This sometimes works, but not always. The PuTTY
team all have full-time jobs and we're doing all of this
work in our free time; we may sometimes be willing to
give up some more of our free time in exchange for
some money, but if you try to bribe us for a big feature
it's entirely possible that we simply won't have the time
to spare - whether you pay us or not. (Also, we don't
accept bribes to add bad features to the Wishlist,
because our desire to provide high-quality software to
the users comes first.)
Offer to help us write the code. This is probably the only
way to get a feature implemented quickly, if it's a big
one that we don't have time to do ourselves.
B.6 Support requests
If you're trying to make PuTTY do something for you and it
isn't working, but you're not sure whether it's a bug or not,
then please consider looking for help somewhere else. This
is one of the most common types of mail the PuTTY team
receives, and we simply don't have time to answer all the
questions. Questions of this type include:

If you want to do something with PuTTY but have no

idea where to start, and reading the manual hasn't
helped, try posting to a newsgroup (see section B.1.2)
and see if someone can explain it to you.
If you have tried to do something with PuTTY but it
hasn't worked, and you aren't sure whether it's a bug in
PuTTY or a bug in your SSH server or simply that you're
not doing it right, then try posting to a newsgroup (see
section B.1.2) and see if someone can solve your
problem. Or try doing the same thing with a different
SSH client and see if it works with that. Please do not
report it as a PuTTY bug unless you are really sure it is
a bug in PuTTY.
If someone else installed PuTTY for you, or you're using
PuTTY on someone else's computer, try asking them for
help first. They're more likely to understand how they
installed it and what they expected you to use it for
than we are.
If you have successfully made a connection to your
server and now need to know what to type at the
server's command prompt, or other details of how to
use the server-end software, talk to your server's
system administrator. This is not the PuTTY team's
problem. PuTTY is only a communications tool, like a
telephone; if you can't speak the same language as the
 person at the other end of the phone, it isn't the
telephone company's job to teach it to you.

If you absolutely cannot get a support question answered

any other way, you can try mailing it to us, but we can't
guarantee to have time to answer it.
B.7 Web server administration
If the PuTTY web site is down (Connection Timed Out),
please don't bother mailing us to tell us about it. Most of us
read our e-mail on the same machines that host the web
site, so if those machines are down then we will notice
before we read our e-mail. So there's no point telling us our
servers are down.

Of course, if the web site has some other error (Connection

Refused, 404 Not Found, 403 Forbidden, or something else)
then we might not have noticed and it might still be worth
telling us about it.

If you want to report a problem with our web site, check

that you're looking at our real web site and not a mirror.
The real web site is at
https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/; if that's
not where you're reading this, then don't report the
problem to us until you've checked that it's really a problem
with the main site. If it's only a problem with the mirror,
you should try to contact the administrator of that mirror
site first, and only contact us if that doesn't solve the
problem (in case we need to remove the mirror from our
list).
B.8 Asking permission for things
PuTTY is distributed under the MIT Licence (see appendix C
for details). This means you can do almost anything you like
with our software, our source code, and our documentation.
The only things you aren't allowed to do are to remove our
copyright notices or the licence text itself, or to hold us
legally responsible if something goes wrong.

So if you want permission to include PuTTY on a magazine

cover disk, or as part of a collection of useful software on a
CD or a web site, then permission is already granted. You
don't have to mail us and ask. Just go ahead and do it. We
don't mind.

(If you want to distribute PuTTY alongside your own

application for use with that application, or if you want to
distribute PuTTY within your own organisation, then we
recommend, but do not insist, that you offer your own first-
line technical support, to answer questions about the
interaction of PuTTY with your environment. If your users
mail us directly, we won't be able to tell them anything
useful about your specific setup.)

If you want to use parts of the PuTTY source code in

another program, then it might be worth mailing us to talk
about technical details, but if all you want is to ask
permission then you don't need to bother. You already have
permission.

If you just want to link to our web site, just go ahead. (It's
not clear that we could stop you doing this, even if we
wanted to!)
B.9 Mirroring the PuTTY web site
If you want to set up a mirror of the PuTTY website, go
ahead and set one up. Please don't bother asking us for
permission before setting up a mirror. You already have
permission.

If the mirror is in a country where we don't already have

plenty of mirrors, we may be willing to add it to the list on
our mirrors page. Read the guidelines on that page, make
sure your mirror works, and email us the information listed
at the bottom of the page.

Note that we do not promise to list your mirror: we get a lot

of mirror notifications and yours may not happen to find its
way to the top of the list.

Also note that we link to all our mirror sites using the
rel="nofollow" attribute. Running a PuTTY mirror is not
intended to be a cheap way to gain search rankings.

If you have technical questions about the process of

mirroring, then you might want to mail us before setting up
the mirror (see also the guidelines on the Mirrors page); but
if you just want to ask for permission, you don't need to.
You already have permission.
B.10 Praise and compliments
One of the most rewarding things about maintaining free
software is getting e-mails that just say ‘thanks’. We are
always happy to receive e-mails of this type.

Regrettably we don't have time to answer them all in

person. If you mail us a compliment and don't receive a
reply, please don't think we've ignored you. We did receive
it and we were happy about it; we just didn't have time to
tell you so personally.

To everyone who's ever sent us praise and compliments, in

the past and the future: you're welcome!
B.11 E-mail address
The actual address to mail is <[email protected]>.
Appendix C: PuTTY Licence
PuTTY is copyright 1997-2019 Simon Tatham.

Portions copyright Robert de Bath, Joris van Rantwijk,

Delian Delchev, Andreas Schultz, Jeroen Massar, Wez
Furlong, Nicolas Barry, Justin Bradford, Ben Harris, Malcolm
Smith, Ahmad Khalifa, Markus Kuhn, Colin Watson,
Christopher Staite, Lorenz Diener, Christian Brabandt, Jeff
Smith, Pavel Kryukov, Maxim Kuznetsov, Svyatoslav
Kuzmich, Nico Williams, Viktor Dukhovni, and CORE SDI
S.A.

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person

obtaining a copy of this software and associated
documentation files (the ‘Software’), to deal in the Software
without restriction, including without limitation the rights to
use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense,
and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to
whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the
following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall

be included in all copies or substantial portions of the
Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED ‘AS IS’, WITHOUT WARRANTY

OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT
LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND
NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT
HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT
OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN
CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR
OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.
Appendix D: PuTTY hacking guide
This appendix lists a selection of the design principles
applying to the PuTTY source code. If you are planning to
send code contributions, you should read this first.

D.1 Cross-OS portability

D.2 Multiple backends treated equally
D.3 Multiple sessions per process on some platforms
D.4 C, not C++
D.5 Security-conscious coding
D.6 Independence of specific compiler
D.7 Small code size
D.8 Single-threaded code
D.9 Keystrokes sent to the server wherever possible
D.10 640×480 friendliness in configuration panels
D.11 Automatically generated Makefiles
D.12 Coroutines in the SSH code
D.13 Single compilation of each source file
D.14 Do as we say, not as we do
D.1 Cross-OS portability
Despite Windows being its main area of fame, PuTTY is no
longer a Windows-only application suite. It has a working
Unix port; a Mac port is in progress; more ports may or
may not happen at a later date.

Therefore, embedding Windows-specific code in core

modules such as ssh.c is not acceptable. We went to great
lengths to remove all the Windows-specific stuff from our
core modules, and to shift it out into Windows-specific
modules. Adding large amounts of Windows-specific stuff in
parts of the code that should be portable is almost
guaranteed to make us reject a contribution.

The PuTTY source base is divided into platform-specific

modules and platform-generic modules. The Unix-specific
modules are all in the unix subdirectory; the Windows-
specific modules are in the windows subdirectory.

All the modules in the main source directory - notably all of

the code for the various back ends - are platform-generic.
We want to keep them that way.

This also means you should stick to the C semantics

guaranteed by the C standard: try not to make assumptions
about the precise size of basic types such as int and long
int; don't use pointer casts to do endianness-dependent
operations, and so on.

(Even within a platform front end you should still be careful

of some of these portability issues. The Windows front end
compiles on both 32- and 64-bit x86 and also Arm.)
Our current choice of C standards version is mostly C99.
With a couple of exceptions, you can assume that C99
features are available (in particular <stdint.h>, <stdbool.h>
and inline), but you shouldn't use things that are new in
C11 (such as <uchar.h> or _Generic).

The exceptions to that rule are due to the need for Visual
Studio compatibility:

Don't use variable-length arrays. Visual Studio doesn't

support them even now that it's adopted the rest of
C99. We use -Wvla when building with gcc and clang, to
make it easier to avoid accidentally breaking that rule.
For historical reasons, we still build with one older VS
version which lacks <inttypes.h>. So that file is included
centrally in defs.h, and has a set of workaround
definitions for the PRIx64-type macros we use. If you
need to use another one of those macros, you need to
add a workaround definition in defs.h, and don't casually
re-include <inttypes.h> anywhere else in the source file.

Here are a few portability assumptions that we do currently

allow (because we'd already have to thoroughly vet the
existing code if they ever needed to change, and it doesn't
seem worth doing that unless we really have to):

You can assume int is at least 32 bits wide. (We've

never tried to port PuTTY to a platform with 16-bit int,
and it doesn't look likely to be necessary in future.)
Similarly, you can assume char is exactly 8 bits.
(Exceptions to that are even less likely to be relevant to
us than short int.)
You can assume that using memset to write zero bytes
over a whole structure will have the effect of setting all
its pointer fields to NULL. (The standard itself guarantees
this for integer fields, but not for pointers.)
 You can assume that time_t has POSIX semantics, i.e.
that it represents an integer number of non-leap
seconds since 1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC. (Times in this
format are used in X authorisation, but we could work
around that by carefully distinguishing local time_t from
time values used in the wire protocol; but these
semantics of time_t are also baked into the shared
library API used by the GSSAPI authentication code,
which would be much harder to change.)
You can assume that the execution character encoding
is a superset of the printable characters of ASCII. (In
particular, it's fine to do arithmetic on a char value
representing a Latin alphabetic character, without
bothering to allow for EBCDIC or other non-consecutive
encodings of the alphabet.)

On the other hand, here are some particular things not to

assume:

Don't assume anything about the signedness of char. In

particular, you must cast char values to unsigned char
before passing them to any <ctype.h> function (because
those expect a non-negative character value, or EOF). If
you need a particular signedness, explicitly specify
signed char or unsigned char, or use C99 int8_t or uint8_t.
From past experience with MacOS, we're still a bit
nervous about '\n' and '\r' potentially having unusual
meanings on a given platform. So it's fine to say \n in a
string you're passing to printf, but in any context where
those characters appear in a standardised wire protocol
or a binary file format, they should be spelled '\012' and
'\015' respectively.
D.2 Multiple backends treated equally
PuTTY is not an SSH client with some other stuff tacked on
the side. PuTTY is a generic, multiple-backend, remote VT-
terminal client which happens to support one backend which
is larger, more popular and more useful than the rest. Any
extra feature which can possibly be general across all
backends should be so: localising features unnecessarily
into the SSH back end is a design error. (For example, we
had several code submissions for proxy support which
worked by hacking ssh.c. Clearly this is completely wrong:
the network.h abstraction is the place to put it, so that it will
apply to all back ends equally, and indeed we eventually put
it there after another contributor sent a better patch.)

The rest of PuTTY should try to avoid knowing anything

about specific back ends if at all possible. To support a
feature which is only available in one network protocol, for
example, the back end interface should be extended in a
general manner such that any back end which is able to
provide that feature can do so. If it so happens that only
one back end actually does, that's just the way it is, but it
shouldn't be relied upon by any code.
D.3 Multiple sessions per process on
some platforms
Some ports of PuTTY - notably the in-progress Mac port -
are constrained by the operating system to run as a single
process potentially managing multiple sessions.

Therefore, the platform-independent parts of PuTTY never

use global variables to store per-session data. The global
variables that do exist are tolerated because they are not
specific to a particular login session: flags defines properties
that are expected to apply equally to all the sessions run by
a single PuTTY process, the random number state in
sshrand.c and the timer list in timing.c serve all sessions
equally, and so on. But most data is specific to a particular
network session, and is therefore stored in dynamically
allocated data structures, and pointers to these structures
are passed around between functions.

Platform-specific code can reverse this decision if it likes.

The Windows code, for historical reasons, stores most of its
data as global variables. That's OK, because on Windows we
know there is only one session per PuTTY process, so it's
safe to do that. But changes to the platform-independent
code should avoid introducing global variables, unless they
are genuinely cross-session.
D.4 C, not C++
PuTTY is written entirely in C, not in C++.

We have made some effort to make it easy to compile our

code using a C++ compiler: notably, our snew, snewn and
sresize macros explicitly cast the return values of malloc and
realloc to the target type. (This has type checking
advantages even in C: it means you never accidentally
allocate the wrong size piece of memory for the pointer type
you're assigning it to. C++ friendliness is really a side
benefit.)

We want PuTTY to continue being pure C, at least in the

platform-independent parts and the currently existing ports.
Patches which switch the Makefiles to compile it as C++ and
start using classes will not be accepted. Also, in particular,
we disapprove of // comments, at least for the moment.
(Perhaps once C99 becomes genuinely widespread we might
be more lenient.)

The one exception: a port to a new platform may use

languages other than C if they are necessary to code on
that platform. If your favourite PDA has a GUI with a C++
API, then there's no way you can do a port of PuTTY without
using C++, so go ahead and use it. But keep the C++
restricted to that platform's subdirectory; if your changes
force the Unix or Windows ports to be compiled as C++,
they will be unacceptable to us.
D.5 Security-conscious coding
PuTTY is a network application and a security application.
Assume your code will end up being fed deliberately
malicious data by attackers, and try to code in a way that
makes it unlikely to be a security risk.

In particular, try not to use fixed-size buffers for variable-

size data such as strings received from the network (or
even the user). We provide functions such as dupcat and
dupprintf, which dynamically allocate buffers of the right
size for the string they construct. Use these wherever
possible.
D.6 Independence of specific compiler
Windows PuTTY can currently be compiled with any of three
Windows compilers: MS Visual C, the Cygwin / mingw32 GNU
tools, and clang (in MS compatibility mode).

This is a really useful property of PuTTY, because it means

people who want to contribute to the coding don't depend
on having a specific compiler; so they don't have to fork out
money for MSVC if they don't already have it, but on the
other hand if they do have it they also don't have to spend
effort installing gcc alongside it. They can use whichever
compiler they happen to have available, or install whichever
is cheapest and easiest if they don't have one.

Therefore, we don't want PuTTY to start depending on which

compiler you're using. Using GNU extensions to the C
language, for example, would ruin this useful property (not
that anyone's ever tried it!); and more realistically,
depending on an MS-specific library function supplied by the
MSVC C library (_snprintf, for example) is a mistake,
because that function won't be available under the other
compilers. Any function supplied in an official Windows DLL
as part of the Windows API is fine, and anything defined in
the C library standard is also fine, because those should be
available irrespective of compilation environment. But
things in between, available as non-standard library and
language extensions in only one compiler, are disallowed.

(_snprintf in particular should be unnecessary, since we

provide dupprintf; see section D.5.)

Compiler independence should apply on all platforms, of

course, not just on Windows.
D.7 Small code size
PuTTY is tiny, compared to many other Windows
applications. And it's easy to install: it depends on no DLLs,
no other applications, no service packs or system upgrades.
It's just one executable. You install that executable
wherever you want to, and run it.

We want to keep both these properties - the small size, and

the ease of installation - if at all possible. So code
contributions that depend critically on external DLLs, or that
add a huge amount to the code size for a feature which is
only useful to a small minority of users, are likely to be
thrown out immediately.

We do vaguely intend to introduce a DLL plugin interface for

PuTTY, whereby seriously large extra features can be
implemented in plugin modules. The important thing,
though, is that those DLLs will be optional; if PuTTY can't
find them on startup, it should run perfectly happily and
just won't provide those particular features. A full
installation of PuTTY might one day contain ten or twenty
little DLL plugins, which would cut down a little on the ease
of installation - but if you really needed ease of installation
you could still just install the one PuTTY binary, or just the
DLLs you really needed, and it would still work fine.

Depending on external DLLs is something we'd like to avoid

if at all possible (though for some purposes, such as
complex SSH authentication mechanisms, it may be
unavoidable). If it can't be avoided, the important thing is
to follow the same principle of graceful degradation: if a DLL
can't be found, then PuTTY should run happily and just not
supply the feature that depended on it.
D.8 Single-threaded code
PuTTY and its supporting tools, or at least the vast majority
of them, run in only one OS thread.

This means that if you're devising some piece of internal

mechanism, there's no need to use locks to make sure it
doesn't get called by two threads at once. The only way
code can be called re-entrantly is by recursion.

That said, most of Windows PuTTY's network handling is

triggered off Windows messages requested by
WSAAsyncSelect(), so if you call MessageBox() deep within some
network event handling code you should be aware that you
might be re-entered if a network event comes in and is
passed on to our window procedure by the MessageBox()
message loop.

Also, the front ends (in particular Windows Plink) can use
multiple threads if they like. However, Windows Plink keeps
very tight control of its auxiliary threads, and uses them
pretty much exclusively as a form of select(). Pretty much
all the code outside windows/winplink.c is only ever called
from the one primary thread; the others just loop round
blocking on file handles and send messages to the main
thread when some real work needs doing. This is not
considered a portability hazard because that bit of
windows/winplink.c will need rewriting on other platforms in
any case.

One important consequence of this: PuTTY has only one

thread in which to do everything. That ‘everything’ may
include managing more than one login session (section
D.3), managing multiple data channels within an SSH
session, responding to GUI events even when nothing is
happening on the network, and responding to network
requests from the server (such as repeat key exchange)
even when the program is dealing with complex user
interaction such as the re-configuration dialog box. This
means that almost none of the PuTTY code can safely block.
D.9 Keystrokes sent to the server
wherever possible
In almost all cases, PuTTY sends keystrokes to the server.
Even weird keystrokes that you think should be hot keys
controlling PuTTY. Even Alt-F4 or Alt-Space, for example. If
a keystroke has a well-defined escape sequence that it
could usefully be sending to the server, then it should do so,
or at the very least it should be configurably able to do so.

To unconditionally turn a key combination into a hot key to

control PuTTY is almost always a design error. If a hot key is
really truly required, then try to find a key combination for
it which isn't already used in existing PuTTYs (either it sends
nothing to the server, or it sends the same thing as some
other combination). Even then, be prepared for the
possibility that one day that key combination might end up
being needed to send something to the server - so make
sure that there's an alternative way to invoke whatever
PuTTY feature it controls.
D.10 640×480 friendliness in
configuration panels
There's a reason we have lots of tiny configuration panels
instead of a few huge ones, and that reason is that not
everyone has a 1600×1200 desktop. 640×480 is still a
viable resolution for running Windows (and indeed it's still
the default if you start up in safe mode), so it's still a
resolution we care about.

Accordingly, the PuTTY configuration box, and the PuTTYgen

control window, are deliberately kept just small enough to
fit comfortably on a 640×480 display. If you're adding
controls to either of these boxes and you find yourself
wanting to increase the size of the whole box, don't. Split it
into more panels instead.
D.11 Automatically generated Makefiles

PuTTY is intended to compile on multiple platforms, and

with multiple compilers. It would be horrifying to try to
maintain a single Makefile which handled all possible
situations, and just as painful to try to directly maintain a
set of matching Makefiles for each different compilation
environment.

Therefore, we have moved the problem up by one level. In

the PuTTY source archive is a file called Recipe, which lists
which source files combine to produce which binaries; and
there is also a script called mkfiles.pl, which reads Recipe
and writes out the real Makefiles. (The script also reads all
the source files and analyses their dependencies on header
files, so we get an extra benefit from doing it this way,
which is that we can supply correct dependency information
even in environments where it's difficult to set up an
automated make depend phase.)

You should never edit any of the PuTTY Makefiles directly.

They are not stored in our source repository at all. They are
automatically generated by mkfiles.pl from the file Recipe.

If you need to add a new object file to a particular binary,

the right thing to do is to edit Recipe and re-run mkfiles.pl.
This will cause the new object file to be added in every tool
that requires it, on every platform where it matters, in
every Makefile to which it is relevant, and to get all the
dependency data right.

If you send us a patch that modifies one of the Makefiles,

you just waste our time, because we will have to convert it
into a change to Recipe. If you send us a patch that modifies
all of the Makefiles, you will have wasted a lot of your time
as well!

(There is a comment at the top of every Makefile in the

PuTTY source archive saying this, but many people don't
seem to read it, so it's worth repeating here.)
D.12 Coroutines in the SSH code
Large parts of the code in the various SSH modules (in fact
most of the protocol layers) are structured using a set of
macros that implement (something close to) Donald Knuth's
‘coroutines’ concept in C.

Essentially, the purpose of these macros are to arrange that

a function can call crReturn() to return to its caller, and the
next time it is called control will resume from just after that
crReturn statement.

This means that any local (automatic) variables declared in

such a function will be corrupted every time you call
crReturn. If you need a variable to persist for longer than
that, you must make it a field in some appropriate structure
containing the persistent state of the coroutine – typically
the main state structure for an SSH protocol layer.

See
https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/coroutines.html
for a more in-depth discussion of what these macros are for
and how they work.

Another caveat: most of these coroutines are not

guaranteed to run to completion, because the SSH
connection (or whatever) that they're part of might be
interrupted at any time by an unexpected network event or
user action. So whenever a coroutine-managed variable
refers to a resource that needs releasing, you should also
ensure that the cleanup function for its containing state
structure can reliably release it even if the coroutine is
aborted at an arbitrary point.
For example, if an SSH packet protocol layer has to have a
field that sometimes points to a piece of allocated memory,
then you should ensure that when you free that memory
you reset the pointer field to NULL. Then, no matter when
the protocol layer's cleanup function is called, it can reliably
free the memory if there is any, and not crash if there isn't.
D.13 Single compilation of each
source file
The PuTTY build system for any given platform works on the
following very simple model:

Each source file is compiled precisely once, to produce a

single object file.
Each binary is created by linking together some
combination of those object files.

Therefore, if you need to introduce functionality to a

particular module which is only available in some of the tool
binaries (for example, a cryptographic proxy authentication
mechanism which needs to be left out of PuTTYtel to
maintain its usability in crypto-hostile jurisdictions), the
wrong way to do it is by adding #ifdefs in (say) proxy.c. This
would require separate compilation of proxy.c for PuTTY and
PuTTYtel, which means that the entire Makefile-generation
architecture (see section D.11) would have to be
significantly redesigned. Unless you are prepared to do that
redesign yourself, and guarantee that it will still port to any
future platforms we might decide to run on, you should not
attempt this!

The right way to introduce a feature like this is to put the

new code in a separate source file, and (if necessary)
introduce a second new source file defining the same set of
functions, but defining them as stubs which don't provide
the feature. Then the module whose behaviour needs to
vary (proxy.c in this example) can call the functions defined
in these two modules, and it will either provide the new
feature or not provide it according to which of your new
modules it is linked with.
Of course, object files are never shared between platforms;
so it is allowable to use #ifdef to select between platforms.
This happens in puttyps.h (choosing which of the platform-
specific include files to use), and also in misc.c (the
Windows-specific ‘Minefield’ memory diagnostic system). It
should be used sparingly, though, if at all.
D.14 Do as we say, not as we do
The current PuTTY code probably does not conform strictly
to all of the principles listed above. There may be the
occasional SSH-specific piece of code in what should be a
backend-independent module, or the occasional
dependence on a non-standard X library function under
Unix.

This should not be taken as a licence to go ahead and

violate the rules. Where we violate them ourselves, we're
not happy about it, and we would welcome patches that fix
any existing problems. Please try to help us make our code
better, not worse!
Appendix E: PuTTY download keys
and signatures
We create GPG signatures for all the PuTTY files distributed
from our web site, so that users can be confident that the
files have not been tampered with. Here we identify our
public keys, and explain our signature policy so you can
have an accurate idea of what each signature guarantees.
This description is provided as both a web page on the
PuTTY site, and an appendix in the PuTTY manual.

As of release 0.58, all of the PuTTY executables contain

fingerprint material (usually accessed via the -pgpfp
command-line option), such that if you have an executable
you trust, you can use it to establish a trust path, for
instance to a newer version downloaded from the Internet.

As of release 0.67, the Windows executables and installer

also contain built-in signatures that are automatically
verified by Windows' own mechanism (‘Authenticode’). The
keys used for that are different, and are not covered here.

(Note that none of the keys, signatures, etc mentioned here

have anything to do with keys used with SSH - they are
purely for verifying the origin of files distributed by the
PuTTY team.)

E.1 Public keys

E.2 Security details
E.2.1 The Development Snapshots key
E.2.2 The Releases key
E.2.3 The Secure Contact Key
E.2.4 The Master Keys
E.3 Key rollover
E.1 Public keys
We maintain multiple keys, stored with different levels of
security due to being used in different ways. See section E.2
below for details.

The keys we provide are:

Snapshot Key
Used to sign routine development builds of PuTTY:
nightly snapshots, pre-releases, and sometimes also
custom diagnostic builds we send to particular users.
Release Key
Used to sign manually released versions of PuTTY.
Secure Contact Key
An encryption-capable key suitable for people to send
confidential messages to the PuTTY team, e.g. reports
of vulnerabilities.
Master Key
Used to tie all the above keys into the GPG web of trust.
The Master Key signs all the other keys, and other GPG
users have signed it in turn.

The current issue of those keys are available for download

from the PuTTY website, and are also available on PGP
keyservers using the key IDs listed below.

Master Key (2018)

RSA, 4096-bit. Key ID: 76BC7FE4EBFD2D9E. Fingerprint:
24E1 B1C5 75EA 3C9F F752 A922 76BC 7FE4 EBFD 2D9E
Release Key (2018)
RSA, 3072-bit. Key ID: 6289A25F4AE8DA82. Fingerprint:
E273 94AC A3F9 D904 9522 E054 6289 A25F 4AE8 DA82
Snapshot Key (2018)
RSA, 3072-bit. Key ID: 38BA7229B7588FD1. Fingerprint:
C92B 52E9 9AB6 1DDA 33DB 2B7A 38BA 7229 B758 8FD1
Secure Contact Key (2018)
RSA, 3072-bit. Key ID: 657D487977F95C98. Fingerprint:
A680 0082 2998 6E46 22CA 0E43 657D 4879 77F9 5C98
E.2 Security details
The various keys have various different security levels. This
section explains what those security levels are, and how far
you can expect to trust each key.

E.2.1 The Development Snapshots key

E.2.2 The Releases key
E.2.3 The Secure Contact Key
E.2.4 The Master Keys
E.2.1 The Development Snapshots key
The Development Snapshots private key is stored without a
passphrase. This is necessary, because the snapshots are
generated every night without human intervention, so
nobody would be able to type a passphrase.

The snapshots are built and signed on a team member's

home computers, before being uploaded to the web server
from which you download them.

Therefore, a signature from the Development Snapshots

key DOES protect you against:

People tampering with the PuTTY binaries between the

PuTTY web site and you.
The maintainers of our web server attempting to abuse
their root privilege to tamper with the binaries.

But it DOES NOT protect you against:

People tampering with the binaries before they are

uploaded to our download servers.
People tampering with the build machines so that the
next set of binaries they build will be malicious in some
way.
People stealing the unencrypted private key from the
build machine it lives on.

Of course, we take all reasonable precautions to guard the

build machines. But when you see a signature, you should
always be certain of precisely what it guarantees and
precisely what it does not.
E.2.2 The Releases key
The Releases key is more secure: because it is only used at
release time, to sign each release by hand, we can store it
encrypted.

The Releases private key is kept encrypted on the

developers' own local machines. So an attacker wanting to
steal it would have to also steal the passphrase.
E.2.3 The Secure Contact Key
The Secure Contact Key is stored with a similar level of
security to the Release Key: it is stored with a passphrase,
and no automated script has access to it.
E.2.4 The Master Keys
The Master Key signs almost nothing. Its purpose is to bind
the other keys together and certify that they are all owned
by the same people and part of the same integrated setup.
The only signatures produced by the Master Key, ever,
should be the signatures on the other keys.

The Master Key is especially long, and its private key and
passphrase are stored with special care.

We have collected some third-party signatures on the

Master Key, in order to increase the chances that you can
find a suitable trust path to them.

We have uploaded our various keys to public keyservers, so

that even if you don't know any of the people who have
signed our keys, you can still be reasonably confident that
an attacker would find it hard to substitute fake keys on all
the public keyservers at once.
E.3 Key rollover
Our current keys were generated in August 2018.

Each new Master Key is signed with the old one, to show
that it really is owned by the same people and not
substituted by an attacker.

Each new Master Key also signs the previous Release Keys,
in case you're trying to verify the signatures on a release
prior to the rollover and can find a chain of trust to those
keys from any of the people who have signed our new
Master Key.

Each release is signed with the Release Key that was

current at the time of release. We don't go back and re-sign
old releases with newly generated keys.

The details of all previous keys are given here.

Key generated in 2016 (when we first introduced the

Secure Contact Key)

Secure Contact Key (2016)

RSA, 2048-bit. Main key ID: 2048R/8A0AF00B (long
version: 2048R/C4FCAAD08A0AF00B). Encryption subkey ID:
2048R/50C2CF5C (long version: 2048R/9EB39CC150C2CF5C).
Fingerprint:
8A26 250E 763F E359 75F3 118F C4FC AAD0 8A0A F00B

Keys generated in the 2015 rollover

Master Key (2015)

RSA, 4096-bit. Key ID: 4096R/04676F7C (long version:
4096R/AB585DC604676F7C). Fingerprint:
440D E3B5 B7A1 CA85 B3CC 1718 AB58 5DC6 0467 6F7C
Release Key (2015)
RSA, 2048-bit. Key ID: 2048R/B43434E4 (long version:
2048R/9DFE2648B43434E4). Fingerprint:
0054 DDAA 8ADA 15D2 768A 6DE7 9DFE 2648 B434 34E4
Snapshot Key (2015)
RSA, 2048-bit. Key ID: 2048R/D15F7E8A (long version:
2048R/EEF20295D15F7E8A). Fingerprint:
0A3B 0048 FE49 9B67 A234 FEB6 EEF2 0295 D15F 7E8A

Original keys generated in 2000 (two sets, RSA and

DSA)

Master Key (original RSA)

RSA, 1024-bit. Key ID: 1024R/1E34AC41 (long version:
1024R/9D5877BF1E34AC41). Fingerprint:
8F 15 97 DA 25 30 AB 0D 88 D1 92 54 11 CF 0C 4C
Master Key (original DSA)
DSA, 1024-bit. Key ID: 1024D/6A93B34E (long version:
1024D/4F5E6DF56A93B34E). Fingerprint:
313C 3E76 4B74 C2C5 F2AE 83A8 4F5E 6DF5 6A93 B34E
Release Key (original RSA)
RSA, 1024-bit. Key ID: 1024R/B41CAE29 (long version:
1024R/EF39CCC0B41CAE29). Fingerprint:
AE 65 D3 F7 85 D3 18 E0 3B 0C 9B 02 FF 3A 81 FE
Release Key (original DSA)
DSA, 1024-bit. Key ID: 1024D/08B0A90B (long version:
1024D/FECD6F3F08B0A90B). Fingerprint:
00B1 1009 38E6 9800 6518 F0AB FECD 6F3F 08B0 A90B
Snapshot Key (original RSA)
RSA, 1024-bit. Key ID: 1024R/32B903A9 (long version:
1024R/FAAED21532B903A9). Fingerprint:
86 8B 1F 79 9C F4 7F BD 8B 1B D7 8E C6 4E 4C 03
Snapshot Key (original DSA)
DSA, 1024-bit. Key ID: 1024D/7D3E4A00 (long version:
1024D/165E56F77D3E4A00). Fingerprint:
63DD 8EF8 32F5 D777 9FF0 2947 165E 56F7 7D3E 4A00
Appendix F: SSH-2 names specified
for PuTTY
There are various parts of the SSH-2 protocol where things
are specified using a textual name. Names ending in
@putty.projects.tartarus.org are reserved for allocation by
the PuTTY team. Allocated names are documented here.

F.1 Connection protocol channel request names

F.2 Key exchange method names
F.3 Encryption algorithm names
F.1 Connection protocol channel
request names
These names can be sent in a SSH_MSG_CHANNEL_REQUEST
message.
[email protected]
This is sent by a client to announce that it will not have
more than one channel open at a time in the current
connection (that one being the one the request is sent
on). The intention is that the server, knowing this, can
set the window on that one channel to something very
large, and leave flow control to TCP. There is no
message-specific data.
[email protected]
PuTTY sends this request along with some
SSH_MSG_CHANNEL_WINDOW_ADJUST messages as part of its
window-size tuning. It can be sent on any type of
channel. There is no message-specific data. Servers
MUST treat it as an unrecognised request and respond
with SSH_MSG_CHANNEL_FAILURE.

(Some SSH servers get confused by this message, so

there is a bug-compatibility mode for disabling it. See
section 4.28.3.)
F.2 Key exchange method names
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
These appeared in various drafts of what eventually
became RFC 4432. They have been superseded by
rsa1024-sha1 and rsa2048-sha256.
F.3 Encryption algorithm names
[email protected]
[email protected]
These were used in drafts of what eventually became
RFC 4345. They have been superseded by arcfour128
and arcfour256.