using.but

putty

\define{versionidusing} \versionid $Id: using.but 7295 2007-02-18 14:02:39Z jacob $

\C{using} Using PuTTY

This chapter provides a general introduction to some more advanced
features of PuTTY. For extreme detail and reference purposes,
\k{config} is likely to contain more information.

\H{using-session} 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.

\S{using-selection} Copying and pasting text

\I{copy and paste}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 \I{Windows clipboard}Windows \i{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.

PuTTY's copy and paste works entirely with the \i{mouse}. In order
to copy text to the clipboard, you just click the \i{left mouse
button} in the \i{terminal window}, and drag to \I{selecting text}select
text. When you let go of the button, the text is \e{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 is done using the right button (or the middle mouse button,
if you have a \i{three-button mouse} and have set it up; see
\k{config-mouse}). (Pressing \i{Shift-Ins}, or selecting \q{Paste}
from the \I{right mouse button, with Ctrl}Ctrl+right-click
\i{context menu}, have the same effect.) When
you click the \i{right mouse button}, PuTTY will read whatever is in
the Windows clipboard and paste it into your session, \e{exactly} as
if it had been typed at the keyboard. (Therefore, be careful of
pasting formatted text into an editor that does automatic indenting;
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. There is nothing PuTTY can do about this.)

If you \i{double-click} the left mouse button, PuTTY will
\I{selecting words}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 \k{config-charclasses}.)
If you \e{triple}-click, or \i{triple-click} and drag, then
PuTTY will \I{selecting lines}select a whole line or sequence of lines.

If you want to select a \I{rectangular selection}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
\k{config-rectselect} for details.)

If you have a \i{middle mouse button}, then you can use it to
\I{adjusting a selection}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.

It's possible for the server to ask to \I{mouse reporting}handle mouse
clicks in the PuTTY window itself.  If this happens, the \i{mouse pointer}
will turn into an arrow, and using the mouse to copy and paste will only
work if you hold down Shift.  See \k{config-features-mouse} and
\k{config-mouseshift} for details of this feature and how to configure
it.

\S{using-scrollback} \I{scrollback}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 \i{scrollbar} on the right side of the
window to look back up the session \i{history} and find it again.

As well as using the scrollbar, you can also page the scrollback up
and down by pressing \i{Shift-PgUp} and \i{Shift-PgDn}. You can
scroll a line at a time using \i{Ctrl-PgUp} and \i{Ctrl-PgDn}. These
are still available if you configure the scrollbar to be invisible.

By default the last 200 lines scrolled off the top are
preserved for you to look at. You can increase (or decrease) this
value using the configuration box; see \k{config-scrollback}.

\S{using-sysmenu} The \ii{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 \i{context menu} brought up
by holding Ctrl and clicking with the right mouse button anywhere
in the \i{PuTTY window}.)

\S2{using-eventlog} The PuTTY \i{Event Log}

If you choose \q{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 \i{clipboard}. If you
are reporting a bug, it's often useful to paste the contents of the
Event Log into your bug report.

\S2{using-specials} \ii{Special commands}

Depending on the protocol used for the current session, there may be
a submenu of \q{special commands}. These are protocol-specific
tokens, such as a \q{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 \q{break} signal can also be invoked from the keyboard with
\i{Ctrl-Break}.

The following \I{Telnet special commands}special commands are
available in Telnet:

\b \I{Are You There, Telnet special command}Are You There

\b \I{Break, Telnet special command}Break

\b \I{Synch, Telnet special command}Synch

\b \I{Erase Character, Telnet special command}Erase Character

\lcont{
PuTTY can also be configured to send this when the Backspace key is
pressed; see \k{config-telnetkey}.
}

\b \I{Erase Line, Telnet special command}Erase Line

\b \I{Go Ahead, Telnet special command}Go Ahead

\b \I{No Operation, Telnet special command}No Operation

\lcont{
Should have no effect.
}

\b \I{Abort Process, Telnet special command}Abort Process

\b \I{Abort Output, Telnet special command}Abort Output

\b \I{Interrupt Process, Telnet special command}Interrupt Process

\lcont{
PuTTY can also be configured to send this when Ctrl-C is typed; see
\k{config-telnetkey}.
}

\b \I{Suspend Process, Telnet special command}Suspend Process

\lcont{
PuTTY can also be configured to send this when Ctrl-Z is typed; see
\k{config-telnetkey}.
}

\b \I{End Of Record, Telnet special command}End Of Record

\b \I{End Of File, Telnet special command}End Of File

In an SSH connection, the following \I{SSH special commands}special
commands are available:

\b \I{IGNORE message, SSH special command}\I{No-op, in SSH}\ii{IGNORE message}

\lcont{
Should have no effect.
}

\b \I{Repeat key exchange, SSH special command}Repeat key exchange

\lcont{
Only available in SSH-2. Forces a \i{repeat key exchange} immediately (and
resets associated timers and counters). For more information about
repeat key exchanges, see \k{config-ssh-kex-rekey}.
}

\b \I{Break, SSH special command}Break

\lcont{
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.
}

\b \I{Signal, SSH special command}Signals (SIGINT, SIGTERM etc)

\lcont{
Only available in SSH-2, and only during a session. Sends various
POSIX signals. Not honoured by all servers.
}

With a serial connection, the only available special command is
\I{Break, serial special command}\q{Break}.

\S2{using-newsession} Starting new sessions

PuTTY's system menu provides some shortcut ways to start new
sessions:

\b Selecting \i{\q{New Session}} will start a completely new
instance of PuTTY, and bring up the configuration box as normal.

\b Selecting \i{\q{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.

\b In an inactive window, selecting \i{\q{Restart Session}} will
do the same as \q{Duplicate Session}, but in the current window.

\b The \i{\q{Saved Sessions} submenu} gives you quick access to any
sets of stored session details you have previously saved. See
\k{config-saving} for details of how to create saved sessions.

\S2{using-changesettings} \I{settings, changing}Changing your
session settings

If you select \i{\q{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 \k{config-saving} for more on saved
sessions.

\S2{using-copyall} \i{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 \i{clipboard} in one go.

\S2{reset-terminal} \I{scrollback, clearing}Clearing and
\I{terminal, resetting}resetting the terminal

The \i{\q{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 \i{\q{Reset Terminal}} option causes a full reset of the
\i{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.

\S2{using-fullscreen} \ii{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
\q{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 \k{config-scrollback}.)

When you are in full-screen mode, you can still access the \i{system
menu} if you click the left mouse button in the \e{extreme} top left
corner of the screen.

\H{using-logging} Creating a \i{log file} of your \I{session
log}session

For some purposes you may find you want to log everything that
appears on your screen. You can do this using the \q{Logging}
panel in the configuration box.