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

Set Up Fail2ban with Short Ban on Ubuntu

Category: VPS Setup

Use short Fail2ban bans on Ubuntu for testing—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 = 3\nbantime = 300

Restart with

systemctl restart fail2ban

open SSH with

ufw allow 22

Trigger bans with 3 failed

ssh user@ip

attempts—check with

fail2ban-client status sshd

expecting a 5-minute (300s) ban On Hetzner this minimizes lockouts during setup—unban manually with

fail2ban-client unban ip

ensuring MySQL and FTP uptime