prosodyctl - Man Page

Manage a Prosody XMPP server

Examples (TL;DR)

Show the status of the Prosody server: sudo prosodyctl status
Reload the server's configuration files: sudo prosodyctl reload
Add a user to the Prosody XMPP server: sudo prosodyctl adduser user@example.com
Set a user's password: sudo prosodyctl passwd user@example.com
Permanently delete a user: sudo prosodyctl deluser user@example.com

Synopsis

prosodyctl command [--help]

Description

prosodyctl is the control tool for the Prosody XMPP server. It may be used to control the server daemon and manage users.

prosodyctl needs to be executed with sufficient privileges to perform its commands. This typically means executing prosodyctl as the root user. If a user named “prosody” is found then prosodyctl will change to that user before executing its commands.

Commands

User Management

In the following commands users are identified by a Jabber ID, jid, of the usual form: user@domain.

adduser jid: Adds a user with Jabber ID, jid, to the server. You will be prompted to enter the user’s password.
passwd jid: Changes the password of an existing user with Jabber ID, jid. You will be prompted to enter the user’s new password.
deluser jid: Deletes an existing user with Jabber ID, jid, from the server.

Daemon Management

Although prosodyctl has commands to manage the prosody daemon it is recommended that you utilize your distributions daemon management features if you attained Prosody through a package.

To perform daemon control commands prosodyctl needs a pidfile value specified in /etc/prosody/prosody.cfg.lua. Failure to do so will cause prosodyctl to complain.

start: Starts the prosody server daemon. If run as root prosodyctl will attempt to change to a user named “prosody” before executing. This operation will block for up to five seconds to wait for the server to execute.
stop: Stops the prosody server daemon. This operation will block for up to five seconds to wait for the server to stop executing.
restart: Restarts the prosody server daemon. Equivalent to running prosodyctl stop followed by prosodyctl start.
reload: Signals the prosody server daemon to reload configuration and reopen log files.
status: Prints the current execution status of the prosody server daemon.

Certificates

prosodyctl can create self-signed certificates, certificate requests and private keys for use with Prosody. Commands are of the form prosodyctl cert subcommand. Commands take a list of hosts to be included in the certificate.

request hosts: Create a certificate request (CSR) file for submission to a certificate authority. Multiple hosts can be given, sub-domains are automatically included.
generate hosts: Generate a self-signed certificate.
key host [size]: Generate a private key of `size' bits (defaults to 2048). Invoked automatically by `request' and `generate' if needed.
config hosts: Produce a config file for the list of hosts. Invoked automatically by `request' and `generate' if needed.
import hosts paths: Copy certificates for hosts into the certificate path and reload prosody.

Debugging

prosodyctl can also show some information about the environment, dependencies and such to aid in debugging.

about: Shows environment, various paths used by Prosody and installed dependencies.
check [what]: Performs various sanity checks on the configuration, DNS setup and configured TLS certificates. what can be one of config, dns certs, disabled and connectivity to run only that check.

Ejabberd Compatibility

ejabberd is another XMPP server which provides a comparable control tool, ejabberdctl, to control its server’s operations. prosodyctl implements some commands which are compatible with ejabberdctl. For details of how these commands work you should see ejabberdctl(8).

register user server password

unregister user server

Options

--config filename: Use the specified config file instead of the default.
--root: Don’t drop root privileges (e.g. when invoked with sudo).
--help: Display help text for the specified command.
--verbose: Increase log level to show debug messages.
--quiet: Reduce log level to only show errors.
--silent: Disable logging completely, leaving only command output.

Files

/etc/prosody/prosody.cfg.lua: The main prosody configuration file. prosodyctl reads this to determine the process ID file of the prosody server daemon and to determine if a host has been configured.