putty(1) GUI SSH, Telnet and Rlogin client for X

SYNOPSIS

putty [ options ] [ host ]

DESCRIPTION

putty is a graphical SSH, Telnet and Rlogin client for X. It is a direct port of the Windows SSH client of the same name.

OPTIONS

The command-line options supported by putty are:

--display display-name
Specify the X display on which to open putty. (Note this option has a double minus sign, even though none of the others do. This is because this option is supplied automatically by GTK. Sorry.)
-fn font-name
Specify the font to use for normal text displayed in the terminal.
-fb font-name
Specify the font to use for bold text displayed in the terminal. If the BoldAsColour resource is set to 1 (the default), bold text will be displayed in different colours instead of a different font, so this option will be ignored. If BoldAsColour is set to 0 or 2 and you do not specify a bold font, putty will overprint the normal font to make it look bolder.
-fw font-name
Specify the font to use for double-width characters (typically Chinese, Japanese and Korean text) displayed in the terminal.
-fwb font-name
Specify the font to use for bold double-width characters (typically Chinese, Japanese and Korean text). Like -fb, this will be ignored unless the BoldAsColour resource is set to 0 or 2.
-geometry geometry
Specify the size of the terminal, in rows and columns of text. See X(7) for more information on the syntax of geometry specifications.
-sl lines
Specify the number of lines of scrollback to save off the top of the terminal.
-fg colour
Specify the foreground colour to use for normal text.
-bg colour
Specify the background colour to use for normal text.
-bfg colour
Specify the foreground colour to use for bold text, if the BoldAsColour resource is set to 1 (the default) or 2.
-bbg colour
Specify the foreground colour to use for bold reverse-video text, if the BoldAsColour resource is set to 1 (the default) or 2. (This colour is best thought of as the bold version of the background colour; so it only appears when text is displayed in the background colour.)
-cfg colour
Specify the foreground colour to use for text covered by the cursor.
-cbg colour
Specify the background colour to use for text covered by the cursor. In other words, this is the main colour of the cursor.
-title title
Specify the initial title of the terminal window. (This can be changed under control of the server.)
-sb- or +sb
Tells putty not to display a scroll bar.
-sb
Tells putty to display a scroll bar: this is the opposite of -sb-. This is the default option: you will probably only need to specify it explicitly if you have changed the default using the ScrollBar resource.
-log logfile, -sessionlog logfile
This option makes putty log all the terminal output to a file as well as displaying it in the terminal.
-sshlog logfile

-sshrawlog logfile
For SSH connections, these options make putty log protocol details to a file. (Some of these may be sensitive, although by default an effort is made to suppress obvious passwords.)

-sshlog logs decoded SSH packets and other events (those that -v would print). -sshrawlog additionally logs the raw encrypted packet data.

-cs charset
This option specifies the character set in which putty should assume the session is operating. This character set will be used to interpret all the data received from the session, and all input you type or paste into putty will be converted into this character set before being sent to the session.

Any character set name which is valid in a MIME header (and supported by putty) should be valid here (examples are `ISO-8859-1', `windows-1252' or `UTF-8'). Also, any character encoding which is valid in an X logical font description should be valid (`ibm-cp437', for example).

putty's default behaviour is to use the same character encoding as its primary font. If you supply a Unicode (iso10646-1) font, it will default to the UTF-8 character set.

Character set names are case-insensitive.

-nethack
Tells putty to enable NetHack keypad mode, in which the numeric keypad generates the NetHack hjklyubn direction keys. This enables you to play NetHack with the numeric keypad without having to use the NetHack number_pad option (which requires you to press `n' before any repeat count). So you can move with the numeric keypad, and enter repeat counts with the normal number keys.
-help, --help
Display a message summarizing the available options.
-pgpfp
Display the fingerprints of the PuTTY PGP Master Keys, to aid in verifying new files released by the PuTTY team.
-load session
Load a saved session by name. This allows you to run a saved session straight from the command line without having to go through the configuration box first.
-ssh, -telnet, -rlogin, -raw, -serial
Select the protocol putty will use to make the connection.
-l username
Specify the username to use when logging in to the server.
-L [srcaddr:]srcport:desthost:destport
Set up a local port forwarding: listen on srcport (or srcaddr:srcport if specified), and forward any connections over the SSH connection to the destination address desthost:destport. Only works in SSH.
-R [srcaddr:]srcport:desthost:destport
Set up a remote port forwarding: ask the SSH server to listen on srcport (or srcaddr:srcport if specified), and to forward any connections back over the SSH connection where the client will pass them on to the destination address desthost:destport. Only works in SSH.
-D [srcaddr:]srcport
Set up dynamic port forwarding. The client listens on srcport (or srcaddr:srcport if specified), and implements a SOCKS server. So you can point SOCKS-aware applications at this port and they will automatically use the SSH connection to tunnel all their connections. Only works in SSH.
-P port
Specify the port to connect to the server on.
-A, -a
Enable (-A) or disable (-a) SSH agent forwarding. Currently this only works with OpenSSH and SSH-1.
-X, -x
Enable (-X) or disable (-x) X11 forwarding.
-T, -t
Enable (-t) or disable (-T) the allocation of a pseudo-terminal at the server end.
-C
Enable zlib-style compression on the connection.
-1, -2
Select SSH protocol version 1 or 2.
-i keyfile
Specify a private key file to use for user authentication. For SSH-2 keys, this key file must be in PuTTY's format, not OpenSSH's or anyone else's.
-hostkey key
Specify an acceptable host public key. This option may be specified multiple times; each key can be either a fingerprint (99:aa:bb:...) or a base64-encoded blob in OpenSSH's one-line format.

Specifying this option overrides automated host key management; only the key(s) specified on the command-line will be accepted (unless a saved session also overrides host keys, in which case those will be added to), and the host key cache will not be written.

-sercfg configuration-string
Specify the configuration parameters for the serial port, in -serial mode. configuration-string should be a comma-separated list of configuration parameters 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.

SAVED SESSIONS

Saved sessions are stored in a .putty/sessions subdirectory in your home directory.

MORE INFORMATION

For more information on PuTTY, it's probably best to go and look at the manual on the web page:

http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/

BUGS

This man page isn't terribly complete.