VPS Guide: Your Go-To for VPS, Ubuntu & Command Line Success

Configure Fail2ban with Max Retry on Ubuntu

Category: VPS Setup

Tune Fail2ban’s maxretry on Ubuntu—install with

apt install fail2ban

then edit /etc/fail2ban/jail local with

nano /etc/fail2ban/jail.local

[sshd]\nenabled = true\nport = 22\nfilter = sshd\nlogpath = /var/log/auth.log\nmaxretry = 10\nbantime = 3600\nfindtime = 600

Restart with

systemctl restart fail2ban

open SSH with

ufw allow 22

This allows 10 fails in 10 minutes (600s) before a 1-hour ban—test with

ssh user@ip

check

fail2ban-client status sshd

On Linode this reduces false positives for MySQL or FTP—lower to 5 if too lenient ensuring uptime with balanced security