diff --git a/Lib/getpass.py b/Lib/getpass.py
index 6b786122ecb..07c89ff0b97 100644
--- a/Lib/getpass.py
+++ b/Lib/getpass.py
@@ -24,6 +24,10 @@ def unix_getpass(prompt='Password: ', stream=None):
     if stream is None:
         stream = sys.stdout
 
+    if not sys.stdin.isatty():
+        print >>sys.stderr, "Warning: sys.stdin is not a tty."
+        return default_getpass(prompt)
+
     try:
         fd = sys.stdin.fileno()
     except:
diff --git a/Misc/NEWS b/Misc/NEWS
index 660651a86b5..51f6ce14c8f 100644
--- a/Misc/NEWS
+++ b/Misc/NEWS
@@ -37,6 +37,9 @@ Extensions Modules
 Library
 -------
 
+- getpass.getpass() now works when sys.stdin is not a tty by printing a warning
+  and falling back to sys.stdin.readline instead of raising termios.error.
+
 - Issue #2014: Allow XML-RPC datetime objects to have dates before
   1900-01-01.