psql: no chance to enter password in certain situations

Christoph Becker wrote:

OS ist Windows XP Prof, PgSQL version is rc5 via windowsinstaller
When trying to restore a db, psql does not ask for the password but
responds imediately with an erromessage as in the following example:

F:\doka\bak>psql -U postgres template1 < pg_dump_all_2005-01-11.txt
Password:
psql: FATAL: password authentication failed for user "postgres"

However, in the following situation the password can still be entered as
expected :

F:\doka\bak>psql -U postgres template1
Password:
Welcome to psql 8.0.0rc5, the PostgreSQL interactive terminal.
......

try -f instead of < like...

psql -U postgres template1 -f pg_dump_all_2005-01-11.txt

btw, personal 'trick', to avoid having to specify template1, I generally
`createdb postgres` right after installing and doing the initdb. this way the
postgres DBA account has his own personal playpen for testing SQL and stuff.

Christoph Becker <cgbecker@gmx.de> writes:

OS ist Windows XP Prof, PgSQL version is rc5 via windowsinstaller
When trying to restore a db, psql does not ask for the password but
responds imediately with an erromessage as in the following example:

F:\doka\bak>psql -U postgres template1 < pg_dump_all_2005-01-11.txt
Password:
psql: FATAL: password authentication failed for user "postgres"

I'm not sure that it's possible to fix that. On Unix we read the
password from /dev/tty not stdin, but on Windows that trick (probably)
does not work, and we have to fall back to reading from stdin ...
which you've stuffed with the input file. Better to use -f to source
the input file.

regards, tom lane