Putty is a powerful and slim ssh tool with rich features. It is widely used to connect to the remote servers. I will summarize some of its settings and usages in this post.

Use X server with putty#

Putty supports X11 forwarding. To enable this feature, do the following steps:

• Load a remote session which you want to use GUI application
• Go to connection->SSH->X11, check the option Enable X11 forwarding (see image below)

• Go back to Session settings and save the change.

After these settings, you should be able to use X11 forwarding. Of course, you need to install a X server application, e.g., xming and vcxsrv.

How to remember the username and password of session?#

Short answer: remembering username is possible, but remembering password is impossible by deliberate design.

In order to set a default username for a session. First load the session. Then go to Connection->Data. Fill the username in the text box on the right of Auto-login username (see image below).

How to save the settings for a session#

This question has confused me for a while. Each time I set up a session, the settings are only valid fro the current session. The next time I open the session, I have to configure it again, which is annoying. The correct steps to save your settings are as follows:

• Choose a particular session from the session list and click Load button to load it as the current session (the session name will appear in the text box under Saved Sessions)

• Change to other settings page and set up the session.
• Go back to the Session page and click Save button to save your settings.

How to start a session directly from the command line#

First make sure that putty executable has been added to your system PATH. Then use the following syntax:

putty -load "<session_name>" 

to open a session directly from command line. <session_name> must be a valid session name.

References#

• http://en.tldp.org/HOWTO/XDMCP-HOWTO/ssh.html
• http://serverfault.com/questions/12295/how-to-make-putty-settings-persistent
• http://tartarus.org/~simon/putty-snapshots/htmldoc/Chapter4.html#config-saving
• https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/faq.html#faq-startsess