Unable to switch on the ssh jail: ERROR No file(s) found for glob /var/log/secure

Symptoms

• While trying to switch on the jail for SSH at Plesk > Tools & Settings > IP Address Banning (Fail2Ban) > Jails the following error occurs:

  PLESK_ERROR: Unable to switch on the selected jails: f2bmng failed: ERROR No file(s) found for glob /var/log/secure
  ERROR Failed during configuration: Have not found any log file for ssh jail
  ERROR:f2bmng:Command ‘[‘/usr/bin/fail2ban-client’, ‘reload’, ‘ssh’]’ returned non-zero exit status 255
  ERROR:f2bmng:Failed to reload following jails due to errors in configuration: ssh.

Cause

Missing /var/log/secure file:

# ls -la /var/log/secure
ls: cannot access /var/log/secure: No such file or directory

Resolution

1. Connect to the server via SSH;
2. Create /var/log/secure file using the following command:

   # touch /var/log/secure

3. Grant appropriate permissions to it with the following commands:

   # chown root:root /var/log/secure
   # chmod 600 /var/log/secure