PuTTY tutorial

This tutorial will show you the basics on how to use the PuTTY SSH/Telnet program to connect to tentacle.net.

Obtaining The Program

Putty is very small; less than 350k. You can even fit it on a floppy disk and bring it with you.

You can download PuTTY for free at this URL:

http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/download.html

It does not need to be installed; just put it where you want and double-click to run it.

Launching The Program

GUI field example

When you first launch the PuTTY program, you should be at the main PuTTY Configuration screen as shown above. Instead of making a profile, we will do a Quick Connection.

On this screen, we will need to make many entries as shown in the picture above.

  1. Where you see Host Name, you need to enter the name of the server you want to connect to, in this case tentacle.net.
  2. Since you will be using SSH, make sure both SSH and Port 22 are selected. Choosing SSH will automatically make the port number change to 22.
  3. Click Open when the above is completed. This will connect you!

The Security Warning

Security warning dialog

If this is the very first time you are connecting using this program to this particular server, then you will receive a warning about how SSH has found a new key, etc. This is normal, it's part of the encryption process. Select Yes. What this does is save the server key on your computer. If it changes, it will warn you since it can be an indication of a certain kind of attack.

The Login Screen

Login window example

Once you've reached this point, it should behave like the telnet sessions you're familiar with. Enter your username and password and you'll be logged in.

Additional Info: Saving A Session

GUI dialog

If you wish to save your session, follow the 3 steps pictured above:

  1. Choose a session name; pick a name you want to refer to this connection.
  2. Make any changes using the white-background menu to the left. There you cane make modifications to how keys act, font sizes, color schemes, etc.
  3. And lastly, click on the Save button to save the profile you just made/edited. You can click on Load in the future to load up this profile and hit Open without going to all the typing in the future.