PRAYER-SESSION(8)

📦 version 1.3.5-dfsg1, in ubuntu jammy

✨ PRAYER-SESSION(8) ✨

okay bestie, gather round 💖 this is prayer-session — the Prayer user session backend daemon, and yes it's giving "quiet little background process that does literally everything". lowkey the backbone of the whole Prayer Webmail situation. no cap. 🫶

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

prayer-session [--config-file file] [[--config-option name=value] ...]
               [--foreground]

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

so prayer-session is the backend process in the Prayer Webmail system. the way that a fresh prayer-session backend gets forked off every single time a user logs in?? iconic behaviour honestly. 💅

this process is holding all of the permanent state associated with that login session, and when I say all, I mean:

  • one or more connections to a IMAP server 👀
  • and possibly connections to accountd servers too

prayer-session talks to the user using HTML over HTTP connections via the prayer(8) proxy. and every login has a session ID that the front end processes use to find the correct backend — like a little name tag so nobody gets lost at the party 🎀

backend server processes move into a dormant state after a certain period of inactivity, shutting down IMAP and accountd connections — but plot twist, those are easily resuscitated when the session wakes up ✨ she's just napping!! and after a long period of inactivity, typically several hours, the session process shuts down. periodt. 💤

👑 OPTIONS 👑

prayer-session accepts the following command-line options:

  • --config-file file — reads configuration from file instead of the default /etc/prayer/prayer.cf. yes ma'am, custom config file, we love to see it 💜
  • --config-option name=value — sets (overrides) the configuration option name to value. and bestie, any number of options can be specified in this manner — go off, stack them all 🍓
  • --foreground — Debug mode. Run a single process in the foreground. very demure, very mindful, stays right there in front of you 🔥

🌈 ENVIRONMENT 🌈

  • PRAYER_CONFIG_FILE — can be set to specify the configuration file to use. but heads up: the --config-file option takes precedence over this variable. command line stays winning, iykyk 😌
  • PRAYER_HOSTNAME — Local hostname. and she does NOT play, this one overrides the hostname setting in the configuration file as well as on the command line. like, both of them. main character energy fr fr 👑

🎀 FILES 🎀

  • /usr/local/prayer/etc/prayer.cf — Default configuration file. 💖
  • /usr/local/prayer/templates/ — Location of standard templates. and here's the tea: the templates are compiled into prayer-session for performance reasons, so the template files are actually not used 🙈 but they are available for customization! so like, they're there for the vibes and for you to customize. best of both worlds. ✨

⭐ SEE ALSO ⭐

💜 AUTHORS 💜

This manual page was put together by Magnus Holmgren <holmgren@debian.org> using documentation written by David Carter <dpc22@cam.ac.uk>. absolute legends, we thank them for their service 🫶

and that's the whole page, bestie!! 🦋 the source/version on this one is The Prayer Webmail Interface and it's dated 17 August 2008 — a certified classic, still slaying in PRAYER-SESSION(8) 💖✨🎀

📦 where this page comes from