Fail2ban service doesn’t start: Error: Job for fail2ban.service failed because a timeout was exceeded.

Symptoms

• Fail2ban does not start with the following error in Plesk:

  PLESK_ERROR: Unable to manage service by f2bmng: (‘start’, ‘fail2ban’). Error: Job for fail2ban.service failed because a timeout was exceeded. See “systemctl status fail2ban.service” and “journalctl -xe” for details. ERROR:f2bmng:Failed to start fail2ban service

• Service status shows the following error:

  # systemctl status fail2ban.service
  ● fail2ban.service – Fail2ban Service
  …
  CGroup: /system.slice/fail2ban.service
  └─18598 /usr/bin/python /usr/bin/fail2ban-server -s /var/run/fail2ban/fail2ban.sock -p /var/run/fail2ban/fail2ban.pid -x -b
  …
  plesk systemd[1]: PID file /var/run/fail2ban.pid not readable (yet?) after start.

• PID file
/var/run/fail2ban.pid
does not exist:

  # ls -lha /var/run/fail2ban.pid
  ls: cannot access /var/run/fail2ban.pid: No such file or directory

• Another PID file is configured in
/etc/fail2ban/fail2ban.conf:

  # grep pidfile /etc/fail2ban/fail2ban.conf
  # Option: pidfile
  pidfile = /var/run/fail2ban/fail2ban.pid

Cause

Misconfiguration of the Fail2ban service.

Resolution

1. Connect to the server using SSH.

2. Check that /var/run/fail2ban and /run/lock/files directories exist:

   # ls -ld /run/lock/files /run/fail2ban

   Note: if the command output says there is “No such file or directory” – check this article first Various actions fail in Plesk with Fail2Ban installed after server reboot: Unable to open file /run/lock/files/, There is no directory /var/run/

3. Set the correct PID file in
/etc/fail2ban/fail2ban.conf so it looks like this:

   # Option: pidfile
   pidfile = /var/run/fail2ban/fail2ban.pid

4. Restart fail2ban service:

   # systemctl restart fail2ban.service 

Additional Information

Various actions fail in Plesk with Fail2Ban installed after server reboot: Unable to open file /run/lock/files/, There is no directory /var/run/