How to capture text, backup configuration (Cisco,Juniper or anything)with Putty

I dont think we need an introduction to the most widely used Remote console utility, PUTTY. Putty support SSH, Telnet, RLogin & RAW connections.

If you telnet or SSH to your Cisco IOS routers or switches or Juniper Firewalls and ofcourse anything that support CLI and SSH or Telnet then one of the things you would prefer to do is to take a backup of the config (Running or Startup) or even capture session text including logs tech information etc. We discussed here about using Hypereterminal to capture text and hence backup and restore config on Cisco IOS Routers and Switches.

Capture Text in Putty

When you have established a remote session with a device like a Cisco Router and you want to capture text from the session as with any other remote consoles like Hyper terminal then

1. Right-click on the menubar and select "change Settings"

2. Click logging under Session.

3. Select "Log all session output"

4. Select the location (default is your desktop) using the browse button and enter the file name (default is putty.log) and click Apply

This should create the file in the location you choose and start loggin everyting from the session.

If you want to make this a default for any saved session in your putty, then choose the session and click load and then follow the above procedure.

Backup config from Cisco IOS Routers & Switches

Now, to backup configuration from a Cisco IOS Based routers and switches, do the following:

ciscorouter# term len 0

ciscorouter# sh running-config

For Startup Configuration

ciscorouter# sh startup-config

The above will show the running config and will in turn be loggedd to the file.

Backup config from Juniper Netscreen Firewalls

In case of Juniper Netscreen based Firewalls,login via SSH or Telnet and run the following command:

admin> get config

As I said earlier, any device that allows you to sh config in the CLI then they all can certainly be backed up this way.