putty and screen and scroll-back buffer [closed]

You might also check out the Screen FAQ which allows a sort of hybrid behavior:

Summary:
add the line to your .screenrc file:

termcapinfo xterm ti@:te@

Reference ( Putty FAQ )

PuTTY’s terminal emulator has always
had the policy that when the
‘alternate screen’ is in use, nothing
is added to the scrollback. This is
because the usual sorts of programs
which use the alternate screen are
things like text editors, which tend
to scroll back and forth in the same
document a lot; so (a) they would fill
up the scrollback with a large amount
of unhelpfully disordered text, and
(b) they contain their own method for
the user to scroll back to the bit
they were interested in. We have
generally found this policy to do the
Right Thing in almost all situations.

Unfortunately, screen is one
exception: it uses the alternate
screen, but it’s still usually helpful
to have PuTTY’s scrollback continue
working. The simplest solution is to
go to the Features control panel and
tick ‘Disable switching to alternate
terminal screen’. (See section 4.6.4
for more details.) Alternatively, you
can tell screen itself not to use the
alternate screen: the screen FAQ
suggests adding the line ‘termcapinfo
xterm ti@:te@’ to your .screenrc file.

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