PuTTY is hands-down the best SSH client for Windows. It’s light-weight with a single putty.exe file and nothing else to install. A while back we wrote about 12 powerful and explained how can help you to organize PuTTY SSH sessions in tabs. In this article, let us review 10 awesome native PuTTY tips and tricks that you might have not explored earlier. If you have not used PuTTY earlier and you have heard only about Silly Putty and Mighty Putty and not the PuTTY software, you may want to download PuTTY software from the official PuTTY download page before exploring these PuTTY tricks.
PuTTY Trick 1: Delete All PuTTY Sessions Together When you are swapping an old computer with a new computer, you may end-up transferring all PuTTY sessions to new computer. Once you’ve transferred all PuTTY sessions, execute “putty -cleanup” from the command line as shown below.
C:putty -cleanup This will display following warning message. Click on ‘Yes’ to wipe-out all PuTTY session and random seed files from the Windows registry. This is a better process to delete all saved PuTTY sessions from Windows registry instead of deleting one-by-one from the PuTTY session list. Fig: Unix top command output not truncated Note: Instead of automatically adjusting the font size during window resize, you can also set the following options “When window is resized” from the PuTTY configuration window.
Change the number of rows and columns. Change the size of the font.
(this is the option we discussed in this tip). Change font size only when maximized.
Forbid resizing completely. (This option can be very helpful, when you don’t want PuTTY window resizing to happen) PuTTY Trick 3: Change the PuTTY SSH Session Window Title By default, PuTTY software displays “username@hostname:” in the PuTTY window title after you login. You can change this to any user-friendly text. Launch PuTTY - Select a Session - Click on Load. From left side tree menu click on Window - Behavior. On the right panel, in the ‘Window Title’ text box enter the desired windows title as shown below. After this change, make sure to save the session.
Fig: PuTTY Event Log Display PuTTY Trick 5: Paste to Clipboard in Rich Text Editor (RTF) Format Typically when you copy/paste from PuTTY window to a word document, it will paste only in plain text as explained below. Login to PuTTY Telnet or SSH session without setting the ‘Paste to clipboard in RTF’ option that was explained below. Execute ‘man ssh’ from the command line. Copy the first few lines of the man output. Launch Microsoft Word and paste the output. You’ll see only the text output without any formatting. Enable the RTF copy/paste feature in PuTTY software as shown below.
Launch PuTTY terminal - Select a Session - Click on Load. From left side tree menu click on Window - Selection.
On the right panel, select the check-box where it says “Paste to clipboard in RTF as well as plain text” as shown in the image below. Fig: PuTTY Window Behavior - Always on Top After this change, login to the PuTTY FTP or SSH or telnet session. This particular session will always stay on top irrespective of any other application you open in the windows. PuTTY Trick 7: Launch PuTTY Client In Full Screen Mode Following are the two methods to launch PuTTY client in full screen mode. Method 1: When the PuTTY client session is running, right mouse-click on the window title and select ‘Full Screen’ (or) Method 2: Launch PuTTY - Select a Session - Click on Load. From left side tree menu click on Window - Behavior.
On the right panel, click on the check-box where it says “Full Screen on Alt Enter” as shown below. Fig: Press Alt-Enter for PuTTY Full Screen After this change, when the PuTTY terminal session is running, press Alt Key + Enter Key to run that particular PuTTY session in full screen.
PuTTY Trick 8: Launch PuTTY Window Maximized by Default By default when you launch any PuTTY terminal session, it runs in the normal window size. Sometimes you may prefer it to start in a maximized mode. Follow the steps mentioned below. Create a new PuTTY windows shortcut. Right mouse-click on this windows shortcut and select properties. Click on the Run drop-down list and select ‘Maximized’ as shown below. Now, anytime you use this PuTTY shortcut to launch any session, it will be displayed in maximized mode by default.
Fig: Open PuTTY in Maximum Window Size PuTTY Trick 9. Move Putty sessions to another computer PuTTY stores all the session information in Windows registry. On the source machine, export the PuTTY session registry information as shown below. C: regedit /e '%userprofile% desktop putty-registry.reg' HKEYCURRENTUSER Software Simontatham Transfer this putty-registry.reg file from source machine to destination machine. On the destination machine, import the PuTTY SSH session registry, by right mouse-click on the putty-registry.reg and click on ‘Merge’.
This will transfer all the PuTTY session information from one windows system to another. Fig: Transfer Windows PuTTY Registry to another computer PuTTY Trick 10: Launch Most frequently Used PuTTY Session Quickly To launch a most frequently used PuTTY session quickly, follow the steps below. Create a new PuTTY windows shortcut. Rename this shortcut to your favorite name. For example, dev-db. Right mouse-click on this shortcut and select properties. In the Target field, at the end append “-load putty-session-name” as shown below.
Now, anytime you click on the dev-db windows shortcut, it will automatically launch the dev-db PuTTY session. If after installing Putty Connection Manager, you have the problem where when you open a single or multiple sessions and they open under seperate windows outside of Putty Connection manager, do the following to correct the issue. Open Putty Connection Manager and click on “TOOLS” – “OPTIONS” then in the options window on the left side click on Plugins and then Putty. Then on the right side of the window put a Check in the box next to “Enable additional timing for PuTTY capture (ms); and set the timing to 800ms. This corrected the issue for me and I can now open a single session or multiple sessions inside the PuTTY Connection Manager window.
Thanks for the tips I picked up a couple I did not know. I have a question. A couple of times I accidentally copied a large block of text in putty (like from the cursor to the end of the window) without scrolling the text with the mouse button pushed down (takes forever).
I am trying to re-create what I did because I frequently have a lot of text to copy. I also use “copy all to clipboard” but sometimes that crashes my putty session if there is a lot of data in the buffer. Not sure if that is a buffer overflow or what but at that point I am scrounging for the data in logs so I don’t do it very often. I allow a lot of lines in my buffer so I am sure that is it. Anyway anyone know how to copy without dong a mouse-click scroll through every line?
The scrolling takes forever and half the time my finger accidentally comes off the mouse and I have to start over gain. You know, I was going to ask, how does a bunch of stuff that’s clearly labeled in the UI constitute “Tricks You Probably Didn’t Know”? But, then I saw Dave’s question (and the one about background color, which hurts my head because the answer is SO obvious), and it became clear. Dave, here’s an 11th thing that a lot of people probably don’t know In the PuTTY Configuration window, under Terminal - Features, there’s a checkbox labelled, “Disable remote-controlled window title changing”. It does pretty much what you’d expect. Of course the “title” option does something; so does the aforementioned checkbox. You get to decide how you want them to interact.
For Anonymous, a 12th, really obvious thing Window - Colours; under “Select a colour to adjust”, click “Default Background”; then enter RGB values, or click “Modify” and use the picker. For Elaine (if you’re still listening), lucky #13 It is indeed tedious to click and drag to the edge of the screen and then wait for the window to scroll as you desire. The alternative is a bit less obvious Look at Window - Selection; “Action of mouse buttons”. However you’re configured, one of the mouse buttons will have the function, “extends”.
You can use this button to select a single character anywhere in the buffer; then use the PuTTY window’s scrollbar to scroll normally; position the pointer and click the “extend” button again; this action will select everything from the previously-selected character to the current position (inclusive). Experiment a bit and you’ll get the hang of it. You better backup the putty registry key a lot using this procedure: Start Run regedit /e “%userprofile% desktop puttybk1.reg” HKEYCURRENTUSER Software SimonTatham Or, backup using a fixed path like: regedit /e “C: Program Files WinSCP PuTTY PuttyBackups puttybk2.reg” HKEYCURRENTUSER Software SimonTatham Because if you don’t backup frequently, and every use “putty -cleanup” falsely believing that it is some kind of useful command, YOU WILL BE TOTALLY WIPED OUT IN A MILLISECOND!!! Using the “putty -cleanup” command will age you several years, whiten your hair, and curl your toenails. Hearken to the voice of experience.
Windows Event Log Management
Copy large sections of text to notepad using a scroll mouse. This is a little tricky so you have to try it a couple of times. You click and hold the scroll weel at the start of the section you want to copy. Roll the scroll weel to select text up or down the page (you may also have to move the mouse around to select the desired text). You can release the scroll weel, move the mouse and then continue selecting further by clicking the scroll weel and rolling it up or down the page – you won’t lose your place as you would when using shift & left click. Hey Guys, I am using MTPuTTY(Multi-Tabbed PuTTY, so i want to know how can we enable the start and end key of the keyboard here.
Mangeengine Event Log Analyzer Setup
Basically its very tedious when i type in a huge line some thing like: ” tcl profilemgr -profile ptse1-bsd2 -projects pts710-latest -platform pts22k -debug 300 -reservation 29554270 ” so if i want to go to first word i.e tcl then i need to keep the left arrow button which is very annoying, start and End key of windows helps alot in our notepad, word file etc, so the same way i wanna do that here. I tried changing the setting using Change Settings–Terminal–Keyboard and enabled “rxvt” and XtermR6(this i had read in some web link hence tried) but this isnt working completely. I will be able to my start Key worked properly but End key(in keyboard) never responses/works. Did i do any mistake or any thing to be done apart from this? Please help me.