Unable to enable the Fail2ban jail and not sure what to do? We have a solution.

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 recently helped out a customer who was unable to enable the Fail2ban jail.

What to do when we are unable to enable the Fail2ban jail

If you are not able to enable the Fail2ban jail, you are likely to come across the errors below:

# plesk bin ip_ban --enable-jails plesk-roundcube
.....
ERROR Found no accessible config files for 'action.d/iptables-multiport' under /etc/fail2ban
ERROR Error in action definition iptables-multiport[name="plesk-roundcube", port="http,https,7080,7081"]
ERROR Errors in jail 'plesk-roundcube'. Skipping...
ERROR:f2bmng:Command '['/usr/bin/fail2ban-client', 'reload', 'plesk-roundcube']' returned non-zero exit status 255
ERROR:f2bmng:Failed to reload following jails due to errors in configuration: plesk-roundcube

According to our Support Team, this specific error will also make it difficult to start a Plesk migration. In other words, you will probably see the following error messages in the migration logs:

=|2021-10-28_17:11:46,741|D|MT|core.runners.base|||stderr: [2020-06-28 17:11:46.522] ERR [util_exec] proc_close() failed ['/opt/psa/admin/bin/f2bmng' '--reload'] with exit code [1]
=|2021-10-28_17:11:46,741|D|MT|core.runners.base|||PHP Fatal error: Uncaught PleskUtilException: f2bmng failed: 2020-06-28 17:11:46,413 fail2ban.configreader [30092]: ERROR Found no accessible config files for 'filter.d/dropbear' under /etc/fail2ban
=|2021-10-28_17:11:46,741|D|MT|core.runners.base|||2020-06-28 17:11:46,413 fail2ban.jailreader [30092]: ERROR Unable to read the filter 'dropbear'
=|2021-10-28_17:11:46,741|D|MT|core.runners.base|||2020-06-28 17:11:46,413 fail2ban.jailsreader [30092]: ERROR Errors in jail 'dropbear'. Skipping...
...

Interestingly, the inability to enable the Fail2ban jail is due to a corrupted Fail2ban installation.

1. 1. First, we have to connect to the server through SSH.
   2. Next, we will create a backup of the Fail2ban jail rules with the following command:

      # cp /etc/fail2ban/jail.local /root/jail.local
   3. After that we have to remove the Fail2ban component with this command:

      # plesk installer --select-release-current --remove-component fail2ban
   4. Then we will rename the Fail2ban directory as seen below:

      # mv /etc/fail2ban /etc/fail2ban_old
   5. Next, we will install Fail2ban component again with this command:

      # plesk installer --select-release-current --install-component fail2ban
   6. Finally, we will move the jail.local file back as seen below:

      # mv /root/jail.local /etc/fail2ban/

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   Conclusion

   To sum up, our skilled Support Engineers at Bobcares demonstrated how to proceed when cannot enable the Fail2ban jail.

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