PRAYER(8)

📦 version 1.3.5-dfsg1, in ubuntu jammy

💖 prayer(8) — bestie edition 💖

okay so first things first: this is a LOCAL manual page, and yeah the header literally calls it UNTITLED() (the audacity 💀), but bestie it has a name and the name is prayer. It's the standalone IMAP-based webmail server, and I'm gonna walk you through it like we're texting at 2am. No cap.

✨ NAME ✨

prayer — standalone IMAP-based webmail server 🦋

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

prayer [--config-file file] [[--config-option name=value] ...]
       [--foreground | --disable-prefork] [--disable-session | --
       session-options ...]

look at that little beauty. now let's break it down. 💅

👑 DESCRIPTION 👑

So prayer is the normal frontend daemon in the Prayer Webmail system. She's a simple HTTP server and a proxy — she serves up icons and other static files, but firstly and foremostly (their words, iconic phrasing, keeping it) she forwards requests to the correct backend daemons based on session IDs passed either in cookies or as part of the URL. She's basically the group chat moderator routing everyone to the right DM. 🫶

The master daemon normally preforks a number of child processes, and each of those will serve a configurable number of requests. The total number of child processes is limited to prevent denial of service attacks. Protective queen behavior, honestly. 🛡️

prayer accepts the following command-line options:

  • --config-file file — Reads configuration from file instead of the default. 📂
  • --config-option name=value — Sets (overrides) the configuration option name to value. Any number of options can be specified in this manner. ✨ (stack 'em, bestie, go off)
  • --foreground — Debug mode. Run a single process in the foreground. 🔍
  • --disable-prefork — Disable preforking. The master daemon will listen for connections on the configured ports and spawn child processes one at a time. 🐣
  • --disable-session — Do not start the session server, prayer-session(8). 🚫
  • -- — End of prayer options; remaining options will be passed to prayer-session(8). 🎀

🌈 ENVIRONMENT 🌈

  • PRAYER_CONFIG_FILE — Can be set to specify the configuration file to use. 📝
  • PRAYER_HOSTNAME — Local hostname. Overrides the hostname setting in the configuration file as well as on the command line. 👑 (yes bestie, she outranks everybody)

🎀 FILES 🎀

  • /usr/local/prayer/etc/prayer.cf — Default configuration file. ⚙️
  • /usr/local/prayer/icons/ — Location of the standard icons used by the interface. 🖼️
  • /usr/local/prayer/static/ — Directory containing other static files; currently only CSS files. 💅
  • /var/spool/prayer/sockets/ — Pre-configured location of sockets for frontend to backend communication. 🔌

🦋 SEE ALSO 🦋

go read those too, iykyk. they're the sequel and the prequel. 📚

💜 AUTHORS 💜

This manual page was put together by Magnus Holmgren <holmgren@debian.org> using documentation written by David Carter <dpc22@cam.ac.uk>. Shoutout to the icons who wrote the docs we're all standing on. 🫡✨

⭐ cute little sign-off: this page came from The Prayer Webmail Interface, dated 17 August 2008, living in section PRAYER(8). fr fr, that's the whole vibe check. byeee 💖🌸🎀
📦 where this page comes from