putty(1)

💅 putty — like, the whole vibe ✨

okay so real talk: this is putty(1), part of the PuTTY tool suite, and bestie you're gonna wanna sit down for this one 🫶

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🌸 NAME 🌸

putty — a GUI SSH, Telnet, Rlogin, and SUPDUP client for X ✨

like, it's a graphical terminal client. for X. it does SSH, it does Telnet, it does Rlogin, it does SUPDUP. all four. she contains multitudes 💅

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🎀 SYNOPSIS 🎀

putty [ options ] [ host ]

so you run putty, optionally throw some options at her, and optionally yeet a host at the end. that's the whole shape of it. iconic honestly 👑

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

okay so putty is a graphical SSH, Telnet, Rlogin, and SUPDUP client for X 🖥️✨ like, it's the actual X version, windows and buttons and everything, not one of those little terminal-only gremlins.

and here's the lore, right: it's a direct port of the Windows SSH client of the same name 🪟➡️🐧 no cap. same name, same energy, just ported straight over to X. she's a transplant and she's thriving 🌱💖

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more coming, bestie — don't go anywhere 🧚‍♀️

✨ OPTIONS ✨

okay so these are the command-line options putty supports, bestie — buckle up, there are a lot of them, and every single one is here 💖

• --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. For example, -fn fixed, -fn "Monospace 12".
• -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 — For SSH connections, this option makes putty log protocol details to a file. It logs decoded SSH packets and other events (those that -v would print). Some of these may be sensitive, although by default an effort is made to suppress obvious passwords.
• -sshrawlog logfile — For SSH connections, this option makes putty log protocol details to a file, and additionally logs the raw encrypted packet data. Some of these may be sensitive, although by default an effort is made to suppress obvious passwords.
• -logoverwrite — If putty is configured to write to a log file that already exists, discard the existing file.
• -logappend — If putty is configured to write to a log file that already exists, append new log data to the existing file.
• -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, -supdup, -raw, -ssh-connection, -serial — Select the protocol putty will use to make the connection.
• -proxycmd command — Instead of making a TCP connection, use command as a proxy; network traffic will be redirected to the standard input and output of command. command must be a single word, so is likely to need quoting by the shell.

The special strings %host and %port in command will be replaced by the hostname and port number you want to connect to; to get a literal % sign, enter %%.

Backslash escapes are also supported, such as sequences like \n being replaced by a literal newline; to get a literal backslash, enter \\. (Further escaping may be required by the shell.)

(See the main PuTTY manual for full details of the supported %- and backslash-delimited tokens, although most of them are probably not very useful in this context.)

• -preconnectcommand command — Specify an external command to run just before making the main network connection. The syntax of command is similar to that for -proxycmd.
• -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.
• -4, -6 — Force use of IPv4 or IPv6 for network connections.
• -i keyfile — Private key file for user authentication. For SSH-2 keys, this key file must be in PuTTY's PPK format, not OpenSSH's format or anyone else's.

If you are using an authentication agent, you can also specify a public key here (in RFC 4716 or OpenSSH format), to identify which of the agent's keys to use.

• -noagent — Don't try to use an authentication agent for local authentication. (This doesn't affect agent forwarding.)
• -agent — Allow use of an authentication agent. (This option is only necessary to override a setting in a saved session.)
• -no-trivial-auth — Disconnect from any SSH server which accepts authentication without ever having asked for any kind of password or signature or token. (You might want to enable this for a server you always expect to challenge you, for instance to ensure you don't accidentally type your key file's passphrase into a compromised server spoofing PuTTY's passphrase prompt.)
• -hostkey key — Specify an acceptable host public key. This option may be specified multiple times; each key can be either a fingerprint (SHA256:AbCdE..., 99:aa:bb:..., etc) 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.

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🌸 SAVED SESSIONS 🌸

Saved sessions are stored in a .putty/sessions subdirectory in your home directory. that's the whole vibe — your saved sessions live there, periodt 🫶

✨ MORE INFORMATION ✨

okay so if you want the actual deep lore on PuTTY — like, more than this little page gives you — bestie, the move is genuinely just to go read the manual on the web page:

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

that's it, that's the whole tip 💖 the real manual is out there living its main character life, and it's got so much more than we've got room for here 🦋

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💀 BUGS 💀

ngl, this man page isn't terribly complete 😭 like, it's giving "outline that never got its glow-up."

no cap — that's the actual documented bug here. the page is just missing stuff. don't come for me, I'm literally just the messenger 🙈

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and that's a wrap, bestie!! 🎀✨

this iconic lil' page is from the PuTTY tool suite, dated 2004‐03‐24, and it lives at putty(1) — go forth and ssh responsibly, you absolute legend 👑💅🫶