The power of the command line
I believe that you should only use the mouse when you don’t know what are doing. That is why graphical interfaces exist. If you have a repetitive task, then clicking the same thing over and over shows that you are poor engineer. You need to take control of your tools to work in the smartest way.
PuTTY is a fine example of having both options. You can clicky-clicky all you want and waste hours of of your life pushing your mouse around the screen. Or you can run a lot of the repetitive PuTTY actions from the command line.
But first thing is to introduce to using the keyboard to get around Windows and open the DOS box. It always surprising how so few people know that Windows can actually be driven using the keyboard and very rarely need to use the mouse.
Installation
You need to note the directory that you installed PuTTY to, something like this would be the default.
and now we are ready to go:
Start PuTTY
So, we are ready to start PuTTY, click start, and PuTTY menu will be clearly displayed.
So lets create a telnet session for a device in our network by entering the details, entering a name in the Saved Sessions box and the clicking on the Save button
Getting to grunter
So normal people would click on Start, All Programs, PuTTY, PuTTY, Click grunter and the Open.
Lot of clicking for not much gain I would say.
Starting Windows programs on the Command Line
You can start just about any program in Windows from the commad line. I am always surprised by how many people don’t know this. Lets look at starting Windows Notepad from the CLI. That is, from a DOS box, just type the command “notepad” and the away it will go.
None of this clicky clicky business.
But we can make this even faster.
Fastest Way to open the the command line ….
The fastest way to open the Windows Start box is to press Control-Escape which will open the Windows Start menu (as if you had clicked on the Start button).
Then press the “r” key (for Run), and type “cmd” and the Windows DOS box (or whatever you choose to call it) will open on your screen.
Fastest way for Notepad would be ….
If you are thinging laterally, you would realise that the fastest way to open Notepad would be:
- press Command-Escape (together)
- press R
- type “notepad”
- and press enter
Ok, now we are starting to get much quicker at getting things done.
Where’s PuTTY ?
So you might think that it would be very easy to just type PuTTY using the same technique. But alas, it does not. Give it a go and do something like this:
you will get…..
It’s all about system paths
MS Windows uses a concept of paths to go searching for where programs are located on your hardware. When using the DOS box, the operating system has no context about where your programs are located on the hard drive. When using the GUI, the information about where the program is located, is contained in the Shortcut that you are clicking on.
You could start PuTTY by typing something like this:
but that is too much typing for me.
We can tell Windows that the directory where the PuTTY program is and to look in there for the program as needed.
To the Control Panel System tab then
In the Control Panel, System Properties, select the Environment Variables button at the bottom:
and then select Path in the System Variables section, and press the Edit button.
and it will look like this ( you need to be a little bit careful here not to delete the content, if you think you have mis-types then just press escape and start over), on the end of the line enter the following text exactly (including the semi colon):
;C:\Program Files\PuTTY
This set the path variables to include the PuTTY program directory in the search path. You only have to do this once. Windows will set the the Environment Variable permanently from now on.
You will need to logout at this point, or restart. The Path Variables are only read once at boot time.
When you come back, open the DOS box again (Ctrl-Escape, R, cmd, Enter – just to remind you), and type path to confirm the variables are in place.
Alrighty then, lets try that again
Ctrl-Escape, R (for run), PuTTY
and we get PuTTY opening just like we were doing clicky-clicky all day.
Ahh, the speed and the comfort!! Can you feel that ?
But you’re right, I want even less clicking…..
BUT, I still have to click on grunter and then open with my mouse hand. Is strikes me that PuTTY was built by people who are really CLI centric so there would have to be options for doing more.
Sure enough. In Section 3.8 of the Help file, cleverly titled “The PuTTY command line” we get the following details.
To start a connection to a server called host:
putty.exe [-ssh | -telnet | -rlogin | -raw] [user@]host
If this syntax is used, settings are taken from the Default Settings (see section 4.1.2); user overrides these settings if supplied. Also, you can specify a protocol, which will override the default protocol (see section 3.8.3.2).
For telnet sessions, the following alternative syntax is supported (this makes PuTTY suitable for use as a URL handler for telnet URLs in web browsers):
putty.exe telnet://host[:port]/
In order to start an existing saved session called sessionname, use the -load option (described in section 3.8.3.1).putty.exe -load “session name”
ALRIGHT!!!!
Even better is this bit
3.8.3.1 -load: load a saved session
The -load option causes PuTTY to load configuration details out of a saved session. If these details include a host name, then this option is all you need to make PuTTY start a session.
You need double quotes around the session name if it contains spaces.
So now I can open a DOS box (Ctrl-Escape, R, cmd, Enter – just to remind you again), then type:
YES! Freedom from the mouse!
A little review then
If you spend all day connecting to equpment, you need to get the connection done as fast as possible. Spending all your life clicky-clicky on the cute little mousey is just distracting you from the task at the hand. It just not geek enough, and you need to be hardcore.
This technique shows a really fast way to get connected to your devices. It works best for SSH devices although it does, kind of support telnet, just not very well.
You can now use the Windows Command Line to connect directly to a SSH host by using this syntax:
putty.exe -ssh emind@198.18.14.9
or you can use telnet
putty.exe telnet://192.168.1.48/
You will need to spend some time learning the keyboard shortcuts that I talked about. Pretty quickly they will become second nature and you will have even more speed and confidence as you move around your network.
More options
This really is only just the start of what can do with PuTTY, and there are lots more things. If you have a favorite then please contact me using the contact form or put something in the comments and I would be pleased to add it or write it up.
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About Greg Ferro
Nice one greg !! It’s true sometimes clicking is just so slow
i use “launchy” http://www.launchy.net/ for fast shortcut start (Putty, SAP, Outlook) etc.
Nice, but not so nice as Quicksilver
Does launchy allow you to specify the host that you wNt to connect to ? Or does it let you just start putty ? If not, I would suggest that this technique is better ?
no problem
press alt and space putty or only “pt 192.168.0.1″ worked fine!
Most companies don’t allow the install of software like launchy. You are lucky to be able to.
Thank god I know all the tricks what you have told. The system path attributes could be changed with autoexec.bat file. So that during the boot process initialization occurs.
But really its nice post.
Using autoexec has caused me problems in the past so I wouldn’t recommend this option.
Even quicker then “CTRL + ESC” is “WINDOWS KEY + R”.
I also second the use of Launchy.
Assumes that you have a keyboard with the Windows key. When using emulators or rdp, the Windows key doesn’t always work. Since I can’t rely on it, I don’t use it.
Start -> Run, “R” isn’t universal — other things can get in the way.
For example, I have remote desktop pinned to my start menu, so I would need to do “Start -> Run, R, R” because the first R takes me to remote desktop.
Alternatively, create a shortcut on the desktop and assign a hot key to it.
Sean
two choices
keep pressing R and it will rotate through the choices
Rename the remote desktop shortcut so it doesn’t start with r
What´s all this enthusiasm about using putty ? Ok, i´ve read the article:
http://etherealmind.com/securecrt-too-expensive-putty-tera-term/
but hey, THATS the way a network engineer works: use Windows+R (or me to-> Launchy), type CRT and than use ALT+C or ALT+Q a lot, automatic login to often used sessions (e.g. a Jumppoint), script your login credentials -> get rid of this “no aaa authorize exec available” bullshit in PIX/ASA, and the list of the benefeit over ALL other terminal emulators goes on and on.
Well if you just use FreeBSD, Solaris, Linux or MacOS as a Desktop workstation non of this junk is necessary. Installing an app just to use ssh … i mean how ridiculous is that. Microsoft *sigh*!
-Alex
I’m with you, but the bulk of companies force you to use Windows, and PuTTY is more common in service providers and corporates than most people imagine. When you dint have choices, this is best worst choice.
ssh is also installed as an application on your favorite linux distro, supplied in a package usually called openssh. the difference is, it’s usually installed by default in most distros. i think comparing two OSes based on this information means you are ridiculous.
yeah, and the SSH Client implementation has absolutly NO comfort. You can connect and thats it. OK, scripting is available
If you´re working with several connections simultaneously and also want some extras, i bet that i´m ten times faster done with a good program like Secure CRT
Actually, when I’m *forced* to use a windows box, I generally rename putty.exe to ssh.exe, and dump it into %WINDIR%/system32 (Or the above procedure of adding putty to your path works also). Then it’s just a quick winkey+r, followed by ssh user@host.
Et voila!
Word.. Secure CRT has the best of both worlds…
Too expensive for many. Probably my favourite on Windows, but when you have a dozen workstations that access different things, it gets very expensive.
Alternatively you could use a MAC and put terminal in the dock, one click and you are ready to telnet or ssh right from terminal. Of course you can always make that faster by using bash aliases so you can shorten “ssh -l user my.server.com” to “my.server.com”.
Hi,
If you get fed up with putty windows popping up every time you want to ssh to a machine, try out mintty.
>> http://code.google.com/p/mintty/ OR http://freshmeat.net/projects/mintty
I no longer use cmd.exe or putty. I have a wonderful term that provides: “xterm-compatible terminal emulation. Its features include a simple options dialog, Unicode support, drag and drop of files and folders, and window transparency.”
Windows is usable again!
OMG !
ssh(1) + screen(1) … that’s all im going to say. i dont expect windows admins to understand.
-Alex
Yep. You are quite correct.
Great tutorial —
A much simpler method which I usually do as a standard on any Windows VM builds is copy the putty.exe executable into the C:\windows directory and rename it to “ssh.exe”. Then I hit a start-run – type ssh x.x.x.x and viola — I open a ssh session to the host I want. As long as the default sessions settings are set to the connection type SSH then you are good. I usually use the built in telnet client in windows or SecureCRT when telnet is needed.
I’m a die hard putty user but my network has hundreds of systems that I have log into. Putty connection manager is the way to go on this one. I created a database with that is laid out with folders that I can navigate through to find the box I need to connect to. This is the antithesis of of what this article is all about.
For my quick and dirty connection I use cygwin ssh. Works just like the linux version. And as for my Windoze laptop, good ol’ kermit to the rescue. It also does zterm transfers for copying up IOS images, that is if you don’t have the thumb-drive available.
A suprising number of companies do not allow you to install extra software, so I haven’t attempted to cover non-core features of PuTTY.
I use portable version of Putty and it is called Kitty
To start it quickly I assigned key combination on shortcut (Ctrl+Alt+T)
Just thanks for such a clear tutorial!
Can PuTTY command line be used with VBScript to completely automate daily download of files?
I’m not sure about the full blown PuTTY client, but it’s little brother Plink can certainly do it. Here is an article that describes exactly how to do just that:
http://www.xpresslearn.com/cisco/general/automate-cisco-commands-from-windows
Man, I wish I would have realized earlier, this is kind of just a silly way of running putty.
I expected to be able to Run putty *inside* console2 or cmd prompt.
not all is lost however, as I did go get puTTy finally, and I happened to read the part about plink.
plink argh@argh.org
no one wants to use puTTy’s ugly interface do they? No WAY!!
<3
so I don’t look like so much of a dick, to the people seeing this in the future. oh yeah “Hi”
I am going to tell you how to do it.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/console/
http://the.earth.li/~sgtatham/putty/latest/x86/plink.exe
get a free shell account:
http://shells.red-pill.eu/
add, plink to path
path C:\where-ever-you-put-plink
plink -P 30 shellmix.com
then you can make an account
and log into it again on 22 by doing:
plink yourcrazyusername@shellmix.com
or maybe you have ssh enabled on your trusty dd-wrt:
plink 192.168.1.1
You missed a lot of good flags
-pw myPassword
logging in right from the cmd
putty userName@gunther -pw myPass
or running a file of commands
-m c:\path\to\file\of\linux\commands.txt