Fail2ban jails not activated on Plesk server and not sure what to do? Take a look at what our Support Techs suggest. 

At Bobcares, we offer solutions for every query, big and small, as a part of our Server Management Service.

Let’s take a look at how our Support Team is ready to help customers with Fail2ban jails not activated on Plesk server error.

How to resolve: Fail2ban jails not activated on Plesk server

Fail2Ban is software that focuses on protecting computer servers from brute-force attacks. It offers self-regulating security, which is essential in the modern world.

Unfortunately, Fail2Ban is still vulnerable to errors every now and then, For instance, the “ Fail2ban jails not activated” error is one such error.
It results in a failure of:

• Activation of Fail2Ban jails failure
• Re-reading IP addresses failure
• Adding Ip address to trusted list failure

This results in the following error message:

ERROR NOK: ('database disk image is malformed',)
ERROR NOK: ('columns jail, path, firstlinemd5 are not unique',)
ERROR NOK: ('database or disk is full',)
ERROR:f2bmng:Command '['/usr/bin/fail2ban-client', 'reload', 'plesk-wordpress']' returned non-zero exit status 255
ERROR:f2bmng:Failed to reload following jails due to errors in configuration: plesk-wordpress

Moreover. this error also prevents removing an IP address from the trusted list as seen below:

Unable to remove some IP addresses from the list of trusted addresses: f2bmng failed: 2020-01-01 12:00:00,576 fail2ban [9512]: ERROR NOK: ('Cannot change database when there are jails present',)
ERROR:__main__:Command '['/usr/bin/fail2ban-client', 'reload']' returned non-zero exit status 255.

Interestingly, these errors are due to a corrupt fail2ban sqlite database.

Fortunately, our Support Techs have a workaround for the problem on hand. It involves replacing the corrupt fail2ban sqlite database by reinstalling Fail2Ban as seen below:

1. First, we will log in to the server through SSH.
2. Next, we have to take a backup of the Fail2Ban database with the following command:

   # cp -a /var/lib/fail2ban/fail2ban.sqlite3{,.bkp}
3. Then, we have to remove the corrupt Fail2Ban sqlite database with this command:

   # rm /var/lib/fail2ban/fail2ban.sqlite3
4. After that, we will reinstall Fail2Ban via either one of the following options:
   • Via Plesk interface
   • Via CLI with these commands:

     # plesk installer --select-release-current --remove-component fail2ban
     # plesk installer --select-release-current --install-component fail2ban

In other words, with this easy workaround, we will no longer have to deal with Fail2ban jails not activated error.

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Conclusion

In brief, our skilled Support Engineers at Bobcares demonstrated what to do when Fail2ban jails not activated on Plesk server.