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Fail2Ban Actions ​

An action is what Fail2Ban does when an address is banned or unbanned: add a firewall rule, send a message, or report the address to an external service.

Fail2Ban actions

Overview ​

URL: /admin/settings/fail2ban-actions

Open it from Settings > Security > Fail2Ban in the sidebar, then pick the Actions tab. The tab carries a counter showing how many panel actions exist.

The page has two lists: the actions this panel owns at the top, and the actions shipped with Fail2Ban below. A server with no custom actions shows No Actions in the upper list, which is the normal state, since the shipped actions cover most needs.

Panel actions ​

The upper list holds the actions created here. It has one column, Name (sortable), with Edit and Delete on each row. A search box filters by name, and the page size can be set to 5, 10, 25, 50, or All.

Local actions ​

The lower list is the read-only set installed with Fail2Ban itself, around fifty entries covering firewall back ends (iptables, nftables, firewallcmd-*), reporting services (abuseipdb, blocklist_de, dshield), edge providers (cloudflare, cloudflare-token), and mail notifications (sendmail-*).

View action opens the definition and pre-fills the create form with it, which is how you make an editable copy. Local actions themselves cannot be changed.

Creating an action ​

New Action opens the create form at /admin/settings/fail2ban-actions/create.

Create Action

Fields ​

  • Local Action Profile - pick a shipped action to pre-fill the name and definition.
  • Action Name (required) - a unique identifier, for example iptables-custom.
  • Content - the definition in Fail2Ban's action format, with a [Definition] section and the actionstart, actionstop, actionban, and actionunban commands.

Actions ​

  • Create - save the action.
  • Create & create another - save it and reopen an empty form.
  • Cancel - return to the list without saving.

Editing and deleting ​

Edit on a panel action reopens the same form with the current values; Save changes applies them. Delete removes the action after a confirmation. A local action cannot be deleted; copy it with View action and change the copy instead.