Several days after I purged prayer, my server crashed hard (kernel
stacktrace).  Picking up the pieces, I found this in /var/log/mail.err:

Jul 28 06:46:08 ahiker prayer-session[12746]: Failed to write log entry to "/var/log/prayer/paniclog": Couldn't open log file: "/var/log/prayer/prayer_session": No such file or directory
Jul 28 06:56:08 ahiker prayer-session[12746]: Failed to write log entry to "/var/log/prayer/paniclog": Couldn't open log file: "/var/log/prayer/prayer_session": No such file or directory
Jul 28 07:06:08 ahiker prayer-session[12746]: Failed to write log entry to "/var/log/prayer/paniclog": Couldn't open log file: "/var/log/prayer/prayer_session": No such file or directory
Jul 28 07:16:08 ahiker prayer-session[12746]: Failed to write log entry to "/var/log/prayer/paniclog": Couldn't open log file: "/var/log/prayer/prayer_session": No such file or directory
Jul 28 07:26:08 ahiker prayer-session[12746]: Failed to write log entry to "/var/log/prayer/paniclog": Couldn't open log file: "/var/log/prayer/prayer_session": No such file or directory
Jul 28 07:36:08 ahiker prayer-session[12746]: Failed to write log entry to "/var/log/prayer/paniclog": Couldn't open log file: "/var/log/prayer/prayer_session": No such file or directory
Jul 28 07:46:09 ahiker prayer-session[12746]: Failed to write log entry to "/var/log/prayer/paniclog": Couldn't open log file: "/var/log/prayer/prayer_session": No such file or directory
Jul 28 07:56:09 ahiker prayer-session[12746]: Failed to write log entry to "/var/log/prayer/paniclog": Couldn't open log file: "/var/log/prayer/prayer_session": No such file or directory
Jul 28 08:06:09 ahiker prayer-session[12746]: Failed to write log entry to "/var/log/prayer/paniclog": Couldn't open log file: "/var/log/prayer/prayer_session": No such file or directory
Jul 28 08:16:09 ahiker prayer-session[12746]: Failed to write log entry to "/var/log/prayer/paniclog": Couldn't open log file: "/var/log/prayer/prayer_session": No such file or directory
Jul 28 08:26:09 ahiker prayer-session[12746]: Failed to write log entry to "/var/log/prayer/paniclog": Couldn't open log file: "/var/log/prayer/prayer_session": No such file or directory
Jul 28 08:36:09 ahiker prayer-session[12746]: Failed to write log entry to "/var/log/prayer/paniclog": Couldn't open log file: "/var/log/prayer/prayer_session": No such file or directory

etc., at least 4 days of this until the moment of the crash.

I cannot say for sure that this caused the crash but clearly, the
session process has been left alive while the log directory has been
pulled from under it by the purge.  Not good.

Dear submitter,

as the package prayer has just been removed from the Debian archive
unstable we hereby close the associated bug reports.  We are sorry
that we couldn't deal with your issue properly.

For details on the removal, please see https://bugs.debian.org/1063872

The version of this package that was in Debian prior to this removal
can still be found using https://snapshot.debian.org/.

Please note that the changes have been done on the master archive and
will not propagate to any mirrors until the next dinstall run at the
earliest.

This message was generated automatically; if you believe that there is
a problem with it please contact the archive administrators by mailing
ftpmaster@ftp-master.debian.org.

Debian distribution maintenance software
pp.
Thorsten Alteholz (the ftpmaster behind the curtain)