Subject: Help for pine !!!

From: Miguel Angel Fernandez Sanjuan <[email-masked]> (by way of "Miguel A. F. Sanjuan" <[email-masked]>)
Date: Thu, 13 Feb 97 21:20:47 GMT

Hi !

When trying to open pine for reading my mail and I type "pine" at the
prompt of the server, it appears a sentence:

Who are you ? (unable to look up login name )

I've been using pine for a very long time without any kind of problem.
Just a few days ago, this always appear whenever I type pine in the
prompt of the server and I do not know what does it means and how to
solve it. Apparently I am the only one using pine right here and the
system manager has no idea of it. Can anyone please help me to solve
this problem allowing me to see my mail in a Unix-Linux platform ?

Thanks in advance.

Miguel Sanjuan

PS:Please email me at the Email-address below.
-- 
************************************************************
Miguel A. F. Sanjuan               
Dpto. de Fisica e Instalaciones    Tfno.: 34-1-336 65 69
E.T.S. de Arquitectura             Fax  : 34-1-544 24 81
Universidad Politecnica de Madrid  Fax  : 34-1-336 65 54
28040 Madrid-Spain                 E-mail:[email-masked]
************************************************************

---

From: SandraB <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 14 Feb 1997 12:22:47 -0500

> Who are you ? (unable to look up login name )

Hi Miguel,

I'm not a "true guru" nor "techie" but I'm going to try to explain this as
best I can.

First off, I thought this was someone playing a joke on you until this
happened to some of our users this morning too.  I had never heard of it
before your posting.

We run AIX Unix here so your solution may be slightly different.

What happened here was that the way our systems are connected together, was
not being recognized by one, "lost" system (this system was the victim of a
power failure last night). 
This system would not recognize certain users in the main passwd file, located
on our main system.

Our systems are linked together via something called "NIS" (formerly known as
yp or yellow pages).  Because the NIS link was not being fully recognized,
when users tried to get to their pine account, they got the "Who are you" 
message.
The "lost" system thought the users had been deleted.  I could tell this by
looking at their .pinerc file.  The ownership of the .pinerc file had been
given over to 3 numbers, as if their user accounts had been deleted.

Our solution was to "un-NIS" that one system, then "re-NIS" it so all were
recognized once again.

I hope that helps you a bit and if you already had a solution, great!
Perhaps you can let me know what your solution was too.

If anyone out there wants to correct any of my "not-quite" technical
explanation, please do (but be gentle!).  :-)

************************************************************************
Sandra Brust						[email-masked]
Happy Harry's, Inc.	(302) 366-0335   ext. 224
    People often find it easier to be result of the past 
				            than a cause of the future.