Using VBinDiff with PuTTY

Unfortunately, I've run into problems using the Unix version of VBinDiff with the popular PuTTY terminal emulator.

The first problem is that, by default, PuTTY identifies itself as an "xterm". But its xterm emulation is not completely accurate, and it so happens that VBinDiff triggers the problem. When using VBinDiff with the "xterm" terminal type, you'll notice that the background color doesn't extend to the right edge of the screen. (Also, the Home and End keys don't work.)

To fix this, you must tell PuTTY to stop pretending it's an xterm. To do that, go to the PuTTY Configuration dialog, and find the Data page (under Connection). Change the Terminal-type string from "xterm" to "putty". Don't forget to save your settings after making this change.

This brings us to the second problem. The terminal description for PuTTY distributed with ncurses 5.4 misidentifies the Home and End keys as Find and Select, respectively. That means those keys won't work in VBinDiff (or other programs, for that matter).

To fix this, you can get the latest terminfo file from the author of ncurses (Thomas Dickey) and install it: ftp://invisible-island.net/ncurses/terminfo.src.gz

Or, for your convenience, I have included the corrected terminfo record with VBinDiff in the file putty.src. To install it (on the system running VBinDiff), simply type:

   tic putty.src

If you do that as root, it will update the system terminfo database with the corrected record. Otherwise, it will install the record in your home directory (under ~/.terminfo).