Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!NORTHSTAR.DARTMOUTH.EDU!dav
From: dav@NORTHSTAR.DARTMOUTH.EDU (William David Haas)
Newsgroups: comp.soft-sys.andrew
Subject: messages - external mail problem
Message-ID: <0ZTIIay1eVew4S3EpX@northstar.dartmouth.edu>
Date: 6 Dec 89 16:58:14 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 19

At Dartmouth we have a campus wide mail service that is implimented via a
socket on a UNIX host.  I have written a program which goes to this host and
retrieves the mail for a particular user and puts it in ~/Mailbox.  Everything
works and messages does correctly fetch the mail when AMS_MailCollectionCommand
is set.

Now, for the problem.  The mail server is accessed by Macs and UNIX machines
around campus.  For security you must specify a user name and password when
connecting and retrieving your mail.  I maintain a resource file for each user
that contains his password.  The problem comes when I the user has changed his
password from another host.  I know that my password is out of date so I need
to get a new password from the user.

The PROBLEM: I don't have stdin.  I have tried reopening stdin and I have tried
getting a new stream.  Neither worked.  Under messages I can get by because I
can fail and run the fetch program in an xterm (if they are running messages
they are in a windowing environment).  Under vui I am stuck.

How can I regain stdin when running vui?