How To Install fail2ban on CentOS 8

fail2ban is Daemon to ban hosts that cause multiple authentication errors

Introduction

In this tutorial we learn how to install fail2ban on CentOS 8.

What is fail2ban

Fail2Ban scans log files and bans IP addresses that makes too many password failures. It updates firewall rules to reject the IP address. These rules can be defined by the user. Fail2Ban can read multiple log files such as sshd or Apache web server ones. Fail2Ban is able to reduce the rate of incorrect authentications attempts however it cannot eliminate the risk that weak authentication presents. Configure services to use only two factor or public/private authentication mechanisms if you really want to protect services. This is a meta-package that will install the default configuration. Other sub-packages are available to install support for other actions and configurations.

We can use yum or dnf to install fail2ban on CentOS 8. In this tutorial we discuss both methods but you only need to choose one of method to install fail2ban.

Install fail2ban on CentOS 8 Using dnf

Update yum database with dnf using the following command.

sudo dnf makecache --refresh

The output should look something like this:

CentOS Linux 8 - AppStream                                       43 kB/s | 4.3 kB     00:00    
CentOS Linux 8 - BaseOS                                          65 kB/s | 3.9 kB     00:00    
CentOS Linux 8 - ContinuousRelease                               43 kB/s | 3.0 kB     00:00    
CentOS Linux 8 - Extras                                          23 kB/s | 1.5 kB     00:00    
CentOS Linux 8 - FastTrack                                       40 kB/s | 3.0 kB     00:00    
CentOS Linux 8 - HighAvailability                                36 kB/s | 3.9 kB     00:00    
CentOS Linux 8 - Plus                                            24 kB/s | 1.5 kB     00:00    
CentOS Linux 8 - PowerTools                                      50 kB/s | 4.3 kB     00:00    
Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux Modular 8 - x86_64           13 kB/s | 9.2 kB     00:00    
Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux 8 - x86_64                   24 kB/s | 8.5 kB     00:00    
Metadata cache created.

After updating yum database, We can install fail2ban using dnf by running the following command:

sudo dnf -y install fail2ban

Install fail2ban on CentOS 8 Using yum

Update yum database with yum using the following command.

sudo yum makecache --refresh

The output should look something like this:

CentOS Linux 8 - AppStream                                       43 kB/s | 4.3 kB     00:00    
CentOS Linux 8 - BaseOS                                          65 kB/s | 3.9 kB     00:00    
CentOS Linux 8 - ContinuousRelease                               43 kB/s | 3.0 kB     00:00    
CentOS Linux 8 - Extras                                          23 kB/s | 1.5 kB     00:00    
CentOS Linux 8 - FastTrack                                       40 kB/s | 3.0 kB     00:00    
CentOS Linux 8 - HighAvailability                                36 kB/s | 3.9 kB     00:00    
CentOS Linux 8 - Plus                                            24 kB/s | 1.5 kB     00:00    
CentOS Linux 8 - PowerTools                                      50 kB/s | 4.3 kB     00:00    
Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux Modular 8 - x86_64           13 kB/s | 9.2 kB     00:00    
Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux 8 - x86_64                   24 kB/s | 8.5 kB     00:00    
Metadata cache created.

After updating yum database, We can install fail2ban using yum by running the following command:

sudo yum -y install fail2ban

How To Uninstall fail2ban on CentOS 8

To uninstall only the fail2ban package we can use the following command:

sudo dnf remove fail2ban

fail2ban Package Contents on CentOS 8

References

Summary

In this tutorial we learn how to install fail2ban on CentOS 8 using yum and dnf.