JAIL.CONF(5) Fail2Ban Configuration JAIL.CONF(5)
NAME
jail.conf - configuration for the fail2ban server
SYNOPSIS
fail2ban.conf fail2ban.d/*.conf fail2ban.local fail2ban.d/*.local
jail.conf jail.d/*.conf jail.local jail.d/*.local
action.d/*.conf action.d/*.local action.d/*.py
filter.d/*.conf filter.d/*.local
DESCRIPTION
Fail2ban has four configuration file types:
fail2ban.conf
Fail2Ban global configuration (such as logging)
filter.d/*.conf
Filters specifying how to detect authentication failures
action.d/*.conf
Actions defining the commands for banning and unbanning of IP ad-
dress
jail.conf
Jails defining combinations of Filters with Actions.
CONFIGURATION FILES FORMAT
*.conf files are distributed by Fail2Ban. It is recommended that *.conf
files should remain unchanged to ease upgrades. If needed, customiza-
tions should be provided in *.local files. For example, if you would
like to enable the [ssh-iptables-ipset] jail specified in jail.conf,
create jail.local containing
jail.local
[ssh-iptables-ipset]
enabled = true
In .local files specify only the settings you would like to change and
the rest of the configuration will then come from the corresponding
.conf file which is parsed first.
jail.d/ and fail2ban.d/
In addition to .local, for jail.conf or fail2ban.conf file there
can be a corresponding .d/ directory containing additional .conf
files. The order e.g. for jail configuration would be:
jail.conf
jail.d/*.conf (in alphabetical order)
jail.local
jail.d/*.local (in alphabetical order).
i.e. all .local files are parsed after .conf files in the origi-
nal configuration file and files under .d directory. Settings in
the file parsed later take precedence over identical entries in
previously parsed files. Files are ordered alphabetically, e.g.
fail2ban.d/01_custom_log.conf - to use a different log path
jail.d/01_enable.conf - to enable a specific jail
jail.d/02_custom_port.conf - to change the port(s) of a jail.
Configuration files have sections, those specified with [section name],
and name = value pairs. For those name items that can accept multiple
values, specify the values separated by spaces, or in separate lines
space indented at the beginning of the line before the second value.
Configuration files can include other (defining common variables) con-
figuration files, which is often used in Filters and Actions. Such in-
clusions are defined in a section called [INCLUDES]:
before indicates that the specified file is to be parsed before the cur-
rent file.
after indicates that the specified file is to be parsed after the cur-
rent file.
Using Python "string interpolation" mechanisms, other definitions are
allowed and can later be used within other definitions as %(name)s.
Fail2ban has more advanced syntax (similar python extended interpola-
tion). This extended interpolation is using %(section/parameter)s to de-
note a value from a foreign section.
Besides cross section interpolation the value of parameter in [DEFAULT]
section can be retrieved with %(default/parameter)s.
Fail2ban supports also another feature named %(known/parameter)s (means
last known option with name parameter). This interpolation makes possi-
ble to extend a stock filter or jail regexp in .local file (opposite to
simply set failregex/ignoreregex that overwrites it), e.g.
baduseragents = IE|wget|%(my-settings/baduseragents)s
failregex = %(known/failregex)s
useragent=%(baduseragents)s
Additionally to interpolation %(known/parameter)s, that does not works
for filter/action init parameters, an interpolation tag <known/parame-
ter> can be used (means last known init definition of filters or actions
with name parameter). This interpolation makes possible to extend a pa-
rameters of stock filter or action directly in jail inside
jail.conf/jail.local file without creating a separately filter.d/*.local
file, e.g.
# filter.d/test.conf:
[Init]
test.method = GET
baduseragents = IE|wget
[Definition]
failregex = ^%(__prefix_line)\s+"<test.method>"\s+test\s+regexp\s+-\s+useragent=(?:<baduseragents>)
# jail.local:
[test]
# use filter "test", overwrite method to "POST" and extend known bad agents with "badagent":
filter = test[test.method=POST, baduseragents="badagent|<known/baduseragents>"]
Comments: use '#' for comment lines and '; ' (space is important) for
inline comments.
FAIL2BAN CONFIGURATION FILE(S) (fail2ban.conf)
The items that can be set in section [Definition] are:
loglevel
verbosity level of log output: CRITICAL, ERROR, WARNING, NOTICE,
INFO, DEBUG, TRACEDEBUG, HEAVYDEBUG or corresponding numeric
value (50-5). Default: INFO (equal 20)
logtarget
log target: filename, SYSLOG, STDERR or STDOUT. Default: STDOUT
if not set in fail2ban.conf/fail2ban.local
Note. If fail2ban running as systemd-service, for logging to the
systemd-journal, the logtarget could be set to STDOUT
Only a single log target can be specified. If you change logtar-
get from the default value and you are using logrotate -- also
adjust or disable rotation in the corresponding configuration
file (e.g. /etc/logrotate.d/fail2ban on Debian systems).
socket socket filename. Default: /var/run/fail2ban/fail2ban.sock
This is used for communication with the fail2ban server daemon.
Do not remove this file when Fail2ban is running. It will not be
possible to communicate with the server afterwards.
pidfile
PID filename. Default: /var/run/fail2ban/fail2ban.pid
This is used to store the process ID of the fail2ban server.
allowipv6
option to allow IPv6 interface - auto, yes (on, true, 1) or no
(off, false, 0). Default: auto
This value can be used to declare fail2ban whether IPv6 is al-
lowed or not.
dbfile Database filename. Default: /var/lib/fail2ban/fail2ban.sqlite3
This defines where the persistent data for fail2ban is stored.
This persistent data allows bans to be reinstated and continue
reading log files from the last read position when fail2ban is
restarted. A value of None disables this feature.
dbmaxmatches
Max number of matches stored in database per ticket. Default: 10
This option sets the max number of matched log-lines could be
stored per ticket in the database. This also affects values re-
solvable via tags <ipmatches> and <ipjailmatches> in actions.
dbpurgeage
Database purge age in seconds. Default: 86400 (24hours)
This sets the age at which bans should be purged from the data-
base.
The config parameters of section [Thread] are:
stacksize
Stack size of each thread in fail2ban. Default: 0 (platform or
configured default)
This specifies the stack size (in KiB) to be used for subse-
quently created threads, and must be 0 or a positive integer
value of at least 32.
JAIL CONFIGURATION FILE(S) (jail.conf)
The following options are applicable to any jail. They appear in a sec-
tion specifying the jail name or in the [DEFAULT] section which defines
default values to be used if not specified in the individual section.
filter name of the filter -- filename of the filter in
/etc/fail2ban/filter.d/ without the .conf/.local extension.
Only one filter can be specified.
logpath
filename(s) of the log files to be monitored, separated by new
lines.
Globs -- paths containing * and ? or [0-9] -- can be used however
only the files that exist at start up matching this glob pattern
will be considered.
Optional space separated option 'tail' can be added to the end of
the path to cause the log file to be read from the end, else de-
fault 'head' option reads file from the beginning
Ensure syslog or the program that generates the log file isn't
configured to compress repeated log messages to "*last message
repeated 5 time*s" otherwise it will fail to detect. This is
called RepeatedMsgReduction in rsyslog and should be Off.
logencoding
encoding of log files used for decoding. Default value of "auto"
uses current system locale.
logtimezone
Force the time zone for log lines that don't have one.
If this option is not specified, log lines from which no explicit
time zone has been found are interpreted by fail2ban in its own
system time zone, and that may turn to be inappropriate. While
the best practice is to configure the monitored applications to
include explicit offsets, this option is meant to handle cases
where that is not possible.
The supported time zones in this option are those with fixed off-
set: Z, UTC[+-]hhmm (you can also use GMT as an alias to UTC).
This option has no effect on log lines on which an explicit time
zone has been found. Examples:
logtimezone = UTC
logtimezone = UTC+0200
logtimezone = GMT-0100
banaction
banning action (default iptables-multiport) typically specified
in the [DEFAULT] section for all jails.
This parameter will be used by the standard substitution of ac-
tion and can be redefined central in the [DEFAULT] section inside
jail.local (to apply it to all jails at once) or separately in
each jail, where this substitution will be used.
banaction_allports
the same as banaction but for some "allports" jails like "pam-
generic" or "recidive" (default iptables-allports).
action action(s) from /etc/fail2ban/action.d/ without the .conf/.local
extension.
Arguments can be passed to actions to override the default values
from the [Init] section in the action file. Arguments are speci-
fied by:
[name=value,name2=value,name3="values,values"]
Values can also be quoted (required when value includes a ",").
More that one action can be specified (in separate lines).
ignoreself
boolean value (default true) indicates the banning of own IP ad-
dresses should be prevented
ignoreip
list of IPs not to ban. They can include a DNS resp. CIDR mask
too. The option affects additionally to ignoreself (if true) and
don't need to contain own DNS resp. IPs of the running host.
ignorecommand
command that is executed to determine if the current candidate IP
for banning (or failure-ID for raw IDs) should not be banned.
This option operates alongside the ignoreself and ignoreip op-
tions. It is executed first, only if neither ignoreself nor ig-
noreip match the criteria.
IP will not be banned if command returns successfully (exit code
0). Like ACTION FILES, tags like <ip> are can be included in the
ignorecommand value and will be substituted before execution.
ignorecache
provide cache parameters (default disabled) for ignore failure
check (caching of the result from ignoreip, ignoreself and ig-
norecommand), syntax:
ignorecache = key="<F-USER>@<ip-host>", max-count=100, max-time=5m
ignorecommand = if [ "<F-USER>" = "technical" ] && [ "<ip-host>" = "my-host.example.com" ]; then exit 0; fi;
exit 1
This will cache the result of ignorecommand (does not call it re-
peatedly) for 5 minutes (cache time) for maximal 100 entries
(cache size), using values substituted like "user@host" as cache-
keys. Set option ignorecache to empty value disables the cache.
bantime
effective ban duration (in seconds or time abbreviation format).
findtime
time interval (in seconds or time abbreviation format) before the
current time where failures will count towards a ban.
maxretry
number of failures that have to occur in the last findtime sec-
onds to ban the IP.
backend
backend to be used to detect changes in the logpath.
It defaults to "auto" which will try "pyinotify", "systemd" be-
fore "polling". Any of these can be specified. "pyinotify" is
only valid on Linux systems with the "pyinotify" Python li-
braries.
usedns use DNS to resolve HOST names that appear in the logs. By default
it is "warn" which will resolve hostnames to IPs however it will
also log a warning. If you are using DNS here you could be block-
ing the wrong IPs due to the asymmetric nature of reverse DNS
(that the application used to write the domain name to log) com-
pared to forward DNS that fail2ban uses to resolve this back to
an IP (but not necessarily the same one). Ideally you should con-
figure your applications to log a real IP. This can be set to
"yes" to prevent warnings in the log or "no" to disable DNS reso-
lution altogether (thus ignoring entries where hostname, not an
IP is logged)..
prefregex
regex (Python regular expression) to parse a common part contain-
ing in every message (see prefregex in section FILTER FILES for
details).
failregex
regex (Python regular expression) to be added to the filter's
failregexes (see failregex in section FILTER FILES for details).
If this is useful for others using your application please share
you regular expression with the fail2ban developers by reporting
an issue (see REPORTING BUGS below).
ignoreregex
regex which, if the log line matches, would cause Fail2Ban not
consider that line. This line will be ignored even if it matches
a failregex of the jail or any of its filters.
maxmatches
max number of matched log-lines the jail would hold in memory per
ticket. By default it is the same value as maxretry of jail (or
default). This option also affects values resolvable via tag
<matches> in actions.
Backends
Available options are listed below.
pyinotify
requires pyinotify (a file alteration monitor) to be installed.
If pyinotify is not installed, Fail2ban will use auto.
polling
uses a polling algorithm which does not require external li-
braries.
systemd
uses systemd python library to access the systemd journal. Speci-
fying logpath is not valid for this backend and instead utilises
journalmatch from the jails associated filter config. Multiple
systemd-specific flags can be passed to the backend, including
journalpath and journalfiles, to explicitly set the path to a di-
rectory or set of files. journalflags, which by default is 4 and
excludes user session files, can be set to include them with
journalflags=1, see the python-systemd documentation for other
settings and further details. Examples:
backend = systemd[journalpath=/run/log/journal/machine-1]
backend = systemd[journalfiles="/path/to/system.journal, /path/to/user.journal"]
backend = systemd[journalflags=1]
Actions
Each jail can be configured with only a single filter, but may have mul-
tiple actions. By default, the name of a action is the action filename,
and in the case of Python actions, the ".py" file extension is stripped.
Where multiple of the same action are to be used, the actname option can
be assigned to the action to avoid duplication e.g.:
[ssh-iptables-ipset]
enabled = true
action = smtp.py[dest=chris@example.com, actname=smtp-chris]
smtp.py[dest=sally@example.com, actname=smtp-sally]
TIME ABBREVIATION FORMAT
The time entries in fail2ban configuration (like findtime or bantime)
can be provided as integer in seconds or as string using special abbre-
viation format (e. g. 600 is the same as 10m).
Abbreviation tokens:
years?, yea?, yy?
months?, mon?
weeks?, wee?, ww?
days?, da, dd?
hours?, hou?, hh?
minutes?, min?, mm?
seconds?, sec?, ss?
The question mark (?) means the optional character, so day as well as days can be used.
You can combine multiple tokens in format (separated with space resp.
without separator), e. g.: 1y 6mo or 1d12h30m.
Note that tokens m as well as mm means minutes, for month use abbrevia-
tion mo or mon.
The time format can be tested using fail2ban-client:
fail2ban-client --str2sec 1d12h
ACTION CONFIGURATION FILES (action.d/*.conf)
Action files specify which commands are executed to ban and unban an IP
address.
Like with jail.conf files, if you desire local changes create an [ac-
tionname].local file in the /etc/fail2ban/action.d directory and over-
ride the required settings.
Action files have two sections, Definition and Init .
The [Init] section enables action-specific settings. In
jail.conf/jail.local these can be overridden for a particular jail as
options of the action's specification in that jail.
The following commands can be present in the [Definition] section.
actionstart
command(s) executed when the jail starts.
actionstop
command(s) executed when the jail stops.
actioncheck
command(s) ran before any other action. It aims to verify if the
environment is still ok.
actionban
command(s) that bans the IP address after maxretry log lines
matches within last findtime seconds.
actionunban
command(s) that unbans the IP address after bantime.
The [Init] section allows for action-specific settings. In
jail.conf/jail.local these can be overwritten for a particular jail as
options to the jail. The following are special tags which can be set in
the [Init] section:
timeout
The maximum period of time in seconds that a command can exe-
cuted, before being killed.
Commands specified in the [Definition] section are executed through a
system shell so shell redirection and process control is allowed. The
commands should return 0, otherwise error would be logged. Moreover if
actioncheck exits with non-0 status, it is taken as indication that
firewall status has changed and fail2ban needs to reinitialize itself
(i.e. issue actionstop and actionstart commands). Tags are enclosed in
<>. All the elements of [Init] are tags that are replaced in all action
commands. Tags can be added by the fail2ban-client using the "set
<JAIL> action <ACT>" command. <br> is a tag that is always a new line
(\n).
More than a single command is allowed to be specified. Each command
needs to be on a separate line and indented with whitespace(s) without
blank lines. The following example defines two commands to be executed.
actionban = iptables -I fail2ban-<name> --source <ip> -j DROP
echo ip=<ip>, match=<match>, time=<time> >>
/var/log/fail2ban.log
Action Tags
The following tags are substituted in the actionban, actionunban and ac-
tioncheck (when called before actionban/actionunban) commands.
ip IPv4 IP address to be banned. e.g. 192.168.0.2
failures
number of times the failure occurred in the log file. e.g. 3
ipfailures
As per failures, but total of all failures for that ip address
across all jails from the fail2ban persistent database. Therefore
the database must be set for this tag to function.
ipjailfailures
As per ipfailures, but total based on the IPs failures for the
current jail.
time UNIX (epoch) time of the ban. e.g. 1357508484
matches
concatenated string of the log file lines of the matches that
generated the ban. Many characters interpreted by shell get es-
caped to prevent injection, nevertheless use with caution.
ipmatches
As per matches, but includes all lines for the IP which are con-
tained with the fail2ban persistent database. Therefore the data-
base must be set for this tag to function.
ipjailmatches
As per ipmatches, but matches are limited for the IP and for the
current jail.
PYTHON ACTION FILES
Python based actions can also be used, where the file name must be [ac-
tionname].py. The Python file must contain a variable Action which
points to Python class. This class must implement a minimum interface as
described by fail2ban.server.action.ActionBase, which can be inherited
from to ease implementation.
FILTER FILES (filter.d/*.conf)
Filter definitions are those in /etc/fail2ban/filter.d/*.conf and fil-
ter.d/*.local.
These are used to identify failed authentication attempts in log files
and to extract the host IP address (or hostname if usedns is true).
Like action files, filter files are ini files. The main section is the
[Definition] section.
There are several standard filter definitions used in the [Definition]
section:
prefregex
is the regex (regular expression) to parse a common part contain-
ing in every message, which is applied after datepattern found a
match, before the search for any failregex or ignoreregex would
start.
If this regex doesn't match the process is starting immediately
with next message and search for any failregex does not occur.
If prefregex contains <F-CONTENT>...</F-CONTENT>, the part of
message enclosed between this tags will be extracted and herafter
used as whole message for search with failregex or ignoreregex.
For example:
prefregex = ^%(__prefix_line)s (?:ERROR|FAILURE) <F-CONTENT>.+</F-CONTENT>$
failregex = ^user not found
^authentication failed
^unknown authentication method
You can use prefregex in order to:
- specify 1 common regex to match some common part present
in every messages (do avoid unneeded match in every fail-
regex if you have more as one);
- to cut some interesting part of message only (to sim-
plify failregex) enclosed between tags <F-CONTENT> and
</F-CONTENT>;
- to gather some failure identifier (e. g. some prefix
matched by <F-MLFID>...<F-MLFID/> tag) to identify several
messages belonging to same session, where a connect mes-
sage containing IP followed by failure message(s) that are
not contain IP; this provides a new multi-line parsing
method as replacement for old (slow an ugly) multi-line
parsing using buffering window (maxlines > 1 and
<SKIPLINES>);
- to ignore some wrong, too long or even unneeded messages
(a.k.a. parasite log traffic) which can be also present in
journal, before failregex search would take place.
failregex
is the regex (regular expression) that will match failed at-
tempts. The standard replacement tags can be used as part of the
regex:
<HOST> - common regex for IP addresses and hostnames (if
usedns is enabled). Fail2Ban will work out which one of
these it actually is.
<ADDR> - regex for IP addresses (both families).
<IP4> - regex for IPv4 addresses.
<IP6> - regex for IPv6 addresses.
<DNS> - regex to match hostnames.
<CIDR> - helper regex to match CIDR (simple integer form
of net-mask).
<SUBNET> - regex to match sub-net addresses (in form of
IP/CIDR, also single IP is matched, so part /CIDR is op-
tional).
<F-ID>...</F-ID> - free regex capturing group targeting
identifier used for ban (instead of IP address or host-
name).
<F-*>...</F-*> - free regex capturing named group stored
in ticket, which can be used in action.
For example <F-USER>[^@]+</F-USER> matches and stores a user name, that can be used in action with interpolation tag <F-USER>.
<F-ALT_*n>...</F-ALT_*n> - free regex capturing alternative named group stored in ticket.
For example first found matched value defined in regex as <F-ALT_USER>, <F-ALT_USER1> or <F-ALT_USER2> would be stored as <F-USER> (if direct match is not found or empty).
Every of abovementioned tags can be specified in prefregex and in failregex, thereby if specified in both, the value matched in failregex overwrites a value matched in prefregex.
All standard tags like IP4 or IP6 can be also specified with custom regex using <F-*>...</F-*> syntax, for example (?:ip4:<F-IP4>\S+</F-IP4>|ip6:<F-IP6>\S+</F-IP6>).
Tags <ADDR>, <HOST> and <SUBNET> would also match the IP address enclosed in square brackets.
NOTE: the failregex will be applied to the remaining part of message after prefregex processing (if specified), which in turn takes place after datepattern processing (whereby the string of timestamp matching the best pattern, cut out from the message).
For multiline regexs (parsing with maxlines greater that 1) the tag <SKIPLINES> can be used to separate lines. This allows lines between the matched lines to continue to be searched for other failures. The tag can be used multiple times.
This is an obsolete handling and if the lines contain some common identifier, better would be to use new handling (with tags <F-MLFID>...<F-MLFID/>).
ignoreregex
is the regex to identify log entries that should be ignored by Fail2Ban, even if they match failregex.
maxlines
specifies the maximum number of lines to buffer to match multi-line regexs. For some log formats this will not required to be changed. Other logs may require to increase this value if a particular log file is frequently written to.
datepattern
specifies a custom date pattern/regex as an alternative to the default date detectors e.g. %%Y-%%m-%%d %%H:%%M(?::%%S)?.
For a list of valid format directives, see Python library documentation for strptime behaviour.
NOTE: due to config file string substitution, that %'s must be escaped by an % in config files.
Also, special values of Epoch (UNIX Timestamp), TAI64N and ISO8601 can be used as datepattern.
Normally the regexp generated for datepattern additionally gets word-start and word-end boundaries to avoid accidental match inside of some word in a message.
There are several prefixes and words with special meaning that could be specified with custom datepattern to control resulting regex:
{DEFAULT} - can be used to add default date patterns of fail2ban.
{DATE} - can be used as part of regex that will be replaced with default date patterns.
{^LN-BEG} - prefix (similar to ^) changing word-start boundary to line-start boundary (ignoring up to 2 characters). If used as value (not as a prefix), it will also set all default date patterns (similar to {DEFAULT}), but anchored at begin of message line.
{UNB} - prefix to disable automatic word boundaries in regex.
{NONE} - value would allow one to find failures totally without date-time in log message. Filter will use now as a timestamp (or last known timestamp from previous line with timestamp).
journalmatch
specifies the systemd journal match used to filter the journal entries. See journalctl(1) and systemd.journal-fields(7) for matches syntax and more details on special journal fields. This option is only valid for the systemd backend.
Similar to actions, filters may have an [Init] section also (optional since v.0.10). All parameters of both sections [Definition] and [Init] can be overridden (redefined or extended) in jail.conf or jail.local (or in related filter.d/filter-name.local).
Every option supplied in the jail to the filter overwrites the value specified in [Init] section, which in turm would overwrite the value in [Definition] section.
Besides the standard settings of filter both sections can be used to initialize filter-specific options.
Filters can also have a section called [INCLUDES]. This is used to read other configuration files.
before indicates that this file is read before the [Definition] section.
after indicates that this file is read after the [Definition] section.
AUTHOR
Fail2ban was originally written by Cyril Jaquier
<cyril.jaquier@fail2ban.org>. At the moment it is maintained and fur-
ther developed by Yaroslav O. Halchenko <debian@onerussian.com>, Daniel
Black <daniel.subs@internode.on.net> and Steven Hiscocks <steven-
fail2ban@hiscocks.me.uk> along with a number of contributors. See
THANKS file shipped with Fail2Ban for a full list. Manual page written
by Daniel Black and Yaroslav Halchenko.
REPORTING BUGS
Report bugs to https://github.com/fail2ban/fail2ban/issues
COPYRIGHT
Copyright © 2013 the Fail2Ban Team
Copyright of modifications held by their respective authors.
Licensed under the GNU General Public License v2 (GPL) or (at your op-
tion) any later version.
SEE ALSO
fail2ban-server(1)
Fail2Ban November 2015 JAIL.CONF(5)
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