PuTTY: Difference between revisions

File:Screengrab - PuTTY 0.53b on Win2K.gif

PuTTY 0.53b main configuration dialog on Windows 2000

PuTTY is a free SSH, Telnet, rlogin, and raw TCP client. It was originally available only for Windows, but is now also available on various Unix platforms, with work-in-progress ports to Classic Mac OS and Mac OS X. Other people have contributed unofficial ports to other platforms. It is written and maintained primarily by Simon Tatham, and is open source, licensed under the MIT license.

The current version (as of April 2005) is 0.58, which contains several new features, including improved Unicode support, for international characters and right-to-left or bidirectional languages.

Prior to 0.58, 3 consecutive releases (0.55–0.57) were made to fix significant security holes in previous versions, some allowing client compromise even before the server is authenticated. If you use PuTTY and haven't checked the site for updates recently you are strongly encouraged to check your version.

Some features of PuTTY are:

• The storing of hosts and preferences for them for later use.
• Control over the SSH encryption key and protocol version.
• Command-line SCP and SFTP clients, called "pscp" and "psftp" respectively.
• Control over port forwarding with SSH, including built-in handling of X11 forwarding.

The name "PuTTY" has no definite meaning; according to the FAQ:

[PuTTY is] 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.

Main functions

Main functions are realised by PuTTY files themselves:

• PuTTY - the Telnet and SSH client itself
• PSCP - an SCP client, i.e. command-line secure file copy
• PSFTP - an SFTP client, i.e. general file transfer sessions much like FTP
• PuTTYtel - a Telnet-only client
• Plink - a command-line interface to the PuTTY back ends
• Pageant - an SSH authentication agent for PuTTY, PSCP and Plink
• PuTTYgen - an RSA and DSA key generation utility.

Alternate versions

• Vintela PuTTY adds support for GSSAPI and Kerberos using a user's Windows desktop login credentials. It is available from Vintela's Resource Central Site under the same license as the main PuTTY release.
• PieTTY is a free SSH client based on PuTTY and more focused on multilingual (especially CJK) environments, usability, and simpler user interface.
• Nutty is a patched version of PuTTY with URL recognition.
• LePutty adds support for Zmodem transfers.
• PuTTYcyg allows PuTTY to act as a Cygwin terminal.

See also: Cygwin/X

External links

• PuTTY official homepage