It's a console application intended to automate connection tasks, like yours. Being a console application, you can redirect its input from a text file: plink.exe -serial -sercfg. PuTTY over Telnet. See Is it possible to send the content of text file over PuTTY over serial port where a solution is given using PLink (PuTTY Link, I presume) which should be part.
Contents
What is PuTTY?
PuTTY is a free software tool that serves as an SSH and telnet client, presenting the user with an xterm terminal emulator. It was originally developed for the Windows operating system by Simon Tatham. PuTTY is open source software and can readily be obtained with its source code by downloading the putty.exe file. A group of volunteers currently develop and support the application.
What is PuTTY Used For?
PuTTY can serve a number of functions when used on the Windows operating system. It is one of the most used SSH clients for the Windows platform. It fills a gap in the Windows operating system, which does not include any SSH server or client software in its default installation.
It is a versatile tool that is most often used in cases where a user on a Windows computer wants to open a remote secure shell (SSH) access session with a Unix or Linux machine. SSH provides encryption in creating a secure remote session. Once connected the user can remotely execute commands and transfer files between machines. They also can monitor ports and devices that are attached to the remote computer.
PuTTY also supports a number of other communication protocols. They include raw, rlogin, serial and Telnet. The login and Telnet protocols allow unencrypted remote logins that typically make use of dedicated ports. Serial is an option that is used to connect a serial line and can be used to establish serial connections between two computers with no other network connection.
Some Disadvantages of PuTTY
In order to monitor multiple devices or ports at the same time using PuTTY you need to have a separate session open for each device. This can make for a very cluttered desktop and information overload, and negatively impact your ability to properly watch the desired devices. It also means the creation of many log files to enable you to save your data for later analysis. Collating these log files into one file that can give you a representation of how your complete system’s serial devices and ports are operating can be an extremely difficult and time-consuming task.
The tool also offers a limited ability to debug, monitor and control serial devices. While you can use PuTTY to enact a serial connection, the functionality of the tool does not lend it for extensive use when working with remote serial interfaces. If you plan to do considerable work with remote serial devices and ports, your best bet may be to seek a PuTTY alternative.
Some uses of this PuTTY alternative for Windows 10 are:
- Emulation of data exchange between Windows applications and serial devices.
- Debugging communication problems with COM devices.
- Reverse-engineering of serial devices and applications
- Device driver development for COM devices
Eltima’s developers have created a tool meant to be used to facilitate the development, testing, and debugging of serial applications. This makes it the perfect PuTTY alternative for serial programmers. A full suite of advanced features are incorporated into this software utility including:
- There are four display modes available in the tool. The table, line, dump, and terminal views all present your data in a unique format. Choose the view that works best for you or display all of them at the same time.
- In Terminal mode you gain the ability to emulate the transmission of serial data to a serial port as if it was sent from the monitored application. Data can be sent in string, binary, octal, decimal, hexadecimal, or mixed formats.
- You can simultaneously monitor multiple serial ports. Serial applications can be connected to multiple COM ports at once and you can monitor the transmission within a single session. Data transmitted by the ports are recorded in one log file on a first-in-first-out basis, allowing for more comprehensive analysis. This may be one of the most useful features for the serial developer.
- Modbus RTU and ASCII protocols are fully supported, and the tool enables you to capture and log data from RS232, RS422, and RS285 devices.
- A session playback feature enables you to more easily review a port’s reaction to a particular data stream. This option allows you to repeat the identical data transmission to a serial port.
Serial Port Monitor provides an excellent alternative to PuTTY for anyone working with serial ports, applications, and devices. It gives you the terminal functionality of PuTTY along with the advances features of a serial port sniffer. Programmers and developers using the Windows operating system and working with serial devices need to add this utility to their toolbox.
Serial Port Monitor
Requirements: Windows XP/2003/2008/Vista/7/8/10/Server 2012 , 9.16MB size
Version 7.0.342 (13th Jan, 2018) Release notes
Category: Communication Application
Version 7.0.342 (13th Jan, 2018) Release notes
Category: Communication Application
9 Nov at 15:18
23 Jan at 13:36
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Previous | Contents | Index | Next
- Chapter 5: Using PSCP to transfer files securely
- 5.2 PSCP Usage
PSCP, the PuTTY Secure Copy client, is a tool for transferring files securely between computers using an SSH connection.
If you have an SSH-2 server, you might prefer PSFTP (see chapter 6) for interactive use. PSFTP does not in general work with SSH-1 servers, however.
5.1 Starting PSCP
PSCP is a command line application. This means that you cannot just double-click on its icon to run it and instead you have to bring up a console window. With Windows 95, 98, and ME, this is called an ‘MS-DOS Prompt’ and with Windows NT, 2000, and XP, it is called a ‘Command Prompt’. It should be available from the Programs section of your Start Menu.
To start PSCP it will need either to be on your
PATH
or in your current directory. To add the directory containing PSCP to your PATH
environment variable, type into the console window: This will only work for the lifetime of that particular console window. To set your
PATH
more permanently on Windows NT, 2000, and XP, use the Environment tab of the System Control Panel. On Windows 95, 98, and ME, you will need to edit your AUTOEXEC.BAT
to include a set
command like the one above. 5.2 PSCP Usage
Once you've got a console window to type into, you can just type
pscp
on its own to bring up a usage message. This tells you the version of PSCP you're using, and gives you a brief summary of how to use PSCP: (PSCP's interface is much like the Unix
scp
command, if you're familiar with that.) 5.2.1 The basics
To receive (a) file(s) from a remote server:
So to copy the file
/etc/hosts
from the server example.com
as user fred
to the file c:tempexample-hosts.txt
, you would type: To send (a) file(s) to a remote server:
So to copy the local file
c:documentsfoo.txt
to the server example.com
as user fred
to the file /tmp/foo
you would type: You can use wildcards to transfer multiple files in either direction, like this:
However, in the second case (using a wildcard for multiple remote files) you may see a warning saying something like ‘warning: remote host tried to write to a file called ‘
terminal.c
’ when we requested a file called ‘*.c
’. If this is a wildcard, consider upgrading to SSH-2 or using the ‘-unsafe
’ option. Renaming of this file has been disallowed’. This is due to a fundamental insecurity in the old-style SCP protocol: the client sends the wildcard string (
*.c
) to the server, and the server sends back a sequence of file names that match the wildcard pattern. However, there is nothing to stop the server sending back a different pattern and writing over one of your other files: if you request *.c
, the server might send back the file name AUTOEXEC.BAT
and install a virus for you. Since the wildcard matching rules are decided by the server, the client cannot reliably verify that the filenames sent back match the pattern. PSCP will attempt to use the newer SFTP protocol (part of SSH-2) where possible, which does not suffer from this security flaw. If you are talking to an SSH-2 server which supports SFTP, you will never see this warning. (You can force use of the SFTP protocol, if available, with
-sftp
- see section 5.2.2.6.) If you really need to use a server-side wildcard with an SSH-1 server, you can use the
-unsafe
command line option with PSCP: This will suppress the warning message and the file transfer will happen. However, you should be aware that by using this option you are giving the server the ability to write to any file in the target directory, so you should only use this option if you trust the server administrator not to be malicious (and not to let the server machine be cracked by malicious people). Alternatively, do any such download in a newly created empty directory. (Even in ‘unsafe’ mode, PSCP will still protect you against the server trying to get out of that directory using pathnames including ‘
..
’.) 5.2.1.1 user
The login name on the remote server. If this is omitted, and
host
is a PuTTY saved session, PSCP will use any username specified by that saved session. Otherwise, PSCP will attempt to use the local Windows username. 5.2.1.2 host
The name of the remote server, or the name of an existing PuTTY saved session. In the latter case, the session's settings for hostname, port number, cipher type and username will be used.
5.2.1.3 source
One or more source files. Wildcards are allowed. The syntax of wildcards depends on the system to which they apply, so if you are copying from a Windows system to a UNIX system, you should use Windows wildcard syntax (e.g.
*.*
), but if you are copying from a UNIX system to a Windows system, you would use the wildcard syntax allowed by your UNIX shell (e.g. *
). If the source is a remote server and you do not specify a full pathname (in UNIX, a pathname beginning with a
/
(slash) character), what you specify as a source will be interpreted relative to your home directory on the remote server. 5.2.1.4 target
The filename or directory to put the file(s). When copying from a remote server to a local host, you may wish simply to place the file(s) in the current directory. To do this, you should specify a target of
.
. For example: ...would copy
/home/tom/.emacs
on the remote server to the current directory. As with the
source
parameter, if the target is on a remote server and is not a full path name, it is interpreted relative to your home directory on the remote server. 5.2.2 Options
PSCP accepts all the general command line options supported by the PuTTY tools, except the ones which make no sense in a file transfer utility. See section 3.8.3 for a description of these options. (The ones not supported by PSCP are clearly marked.)
PSCP also supports some of its own options. The following sections describe PSCP's specific command-line options.
5.2.2.1 -ls
list remote files
If the
-ls
option is given, no files are transferred; instead, remote files are listed. Only a hostname specification and optional remote file specification need be given. For example: The SCP protocol does not contain within itself a means of listing files. If SCP is in use, this option therefore assumes that the server responds appropriately to the command
ls -la
; this may not work with all servers. If SFTP is in use, this option should work with all servers.
5.2.2.2 -p
preserve file attributes
By default, files copied with PSCP are timestamped with the date and time they were copied. The
-p
option preserves the original timestamp on copied files. 5.2.2.3 -q
quiet, don't show statistics
By default, PSCP displays a meter displaying the progress of the current transfer:
The fields in this display are (from left to right), filename, size (in kilobytes) of file transferred so far, estimate of how fast the file is being transferred (in kilobytes per second), estimated time that the transfer will be complete, and percentage of the file so far transferred. The
-q
option to PSCP suppresses the printing of these statistics. 5.2.2.4 -r
copies directories recursively
By default, PSCP will only copy files. Any directories you specify to copy will be skipped, as will their contents. The
-r
option tells PSCP to descend into any directories you specify, and to copy them and their contents. This allows you to use PSCP to transfer whole directory structures between machines. 5.2.2.5 -batch
avoid interactive prompts
If you use the
-batch
option, PSCP will never give an interactive prompt while establishing the connection. If the server's host key is invalid, for example (see section 2.2), then the connection will simply be abandoned instead of asking you what to do next. This may help PSCP's behaviour when it is used in automated scripts: using
-batch
, if something goes wrong at connection time, the batch job will fail rather than hang. 5.2.2.6 -sftp
, -scp
force use of particular protocol
As mentioned in section 5.2.1, there are two different file transfer protocols in use with SSH. Despite its name, PSCP (like many other ostensible
scp
clients) can use either of these protocols. The older SCP protocol does not have a written specification and leaves a lot of detail to the server platform. Wildcards are expanded on the server. The simple design means that any wildcard specification supported by the server platform (such as brace expansion) can be used, but also leads to interoperability issues such as with filename quoting (for instance, where filenames contain spaces), and also the security issue described in section 5.2.1.
The newer SFTP protocol, which is usually associated with SSH-2 servers, is specified in a more platform independent way, and leaves issues such as wildcard syntax up to the client. (PuTTY's SFTP wildcard syntax is described in section 6.2.2.) This makes it more consistent across platforms, more suitable for scripting and automation, and avoids security issues with wildcard matching.
Normally PSCP will attempt to use the SFTP protocol, and only fall back to the SCP protocol if SFTP is not available on the server.
The
-scp
option forces PSCP to use the SCP protocol or quit. The
-sftp
option forces PSCP to use the SFTP protocol or quit. When this option is specified, PSCP looks harder for an SFTP server, which may allow use of SFTP with SSH-1 depending on server setup. 5.2.3 Return value
PSCP returns an
ERRORLEVEL
of zero (success) only if the files were correctly transferred. You can test for this in a batch file, using code such as this: 5.2.4 Using public key authentication with PSCP
Like PuTTY, PSCP can authenticate using a public key instead of a password. There are three ways you can do this.
Firstly, PSCP can use PuTTY saved sessions in place of hostnames (see section 5.2.1.2). So you would do this:
- Run PuTTY, and create a PuTTY saved session (see section 4.1.2) which specifies your private key file (see section 4.22.8). You will probably also want to specify a username to log in as (see section 4.14.1).
- In PSCP, you can now use the name of the session instead of a hostname: type
pscp sessionname:file localfile
, wheresessionname
is replaced by the name of your saved session.
Secondly, you can supply the name of a private key file on the command line, with the
-i
option. See section 3.8.3.18 for more information. Thirdly, PSCP will attempt to authenticate using Pageant if Pageant is running (see chapter 9). So you would do this:
- Ensure Pageant is running, and has your private key stored in it.
- Specify a user and host name to PSCP as normal. PSCP will automatically detect Pageant and try to use the keys within it.
For more general information on public-key authentication, see chapter 8.
If you want to provide feedback on this manual or on the PuTTY tools themselves, see the Feedback page.
[PuTTY release 0.68]