The Tool Desk
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These charts show configured jail counters and exporter health. They help you spot changes in failures and bans, but they are not a complete investigation of an attack or a record of every event in your system.
How the monitoring path works
Fail2Ban watches log files for patterns such as repeated authentication failures and can ban matching IP addresses through firewall rules. An exporter reads Fail2Ban’s status, Prometheus scrapes the resulting metrics, and Grafana queries Prometheus to display them. Fail2Ban describes its role in the fail2ban-client manual.
The dashboard reflects the jails and counters available from your configuration. It can help answer questions such as whether a jail currently has banned addresses or whether its total ban count is rising. It does not, by itself, establish who controlled an IP, whether a login succeeded elsewhere, or the scope of a security incident.
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Choose an exporter approach
| Approach | How it works | Best fit | Trade-offs |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dedicated Fail2Ban exporter | Reads the Fail2Ban socket and serves a Prometheus endpoint at /metrics; the documented project listens on port 9191. |
You want a straightforward Prometheus scrape target and can run a separate service or container. | The process needs access to the Fail2Ban socket, and its endpoint should be reachable only from the monitoring network. |
| Node Exporter textfile collector | A script obtains Fail2Ban status and writes Prometheus-format metrics to Node Exporter’s textfile directory. | Node Exporter is already running on the host. | You must manage script scheduling, output format, file ownership and permissions. The values are snapshots updated when the script runs. |
The dedicated exporter and example dashboard are documented by the hctrdev Fail2Ban exporter project. Prometheus distinguishes official from externally maintained exporters in its exporter documentation; treat this project as an external dependency and check its current releases, platform support and configuration before deploying it.
If you use Node Exporter, its guide to monitoring Linux host metrics explains the exporter and Prometheus scrape-target workflow. The Fail2Ban textfile script is a separate collection method, not a built-in Fail2Ban feature.
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Check Fail2Ban before adding monitoring
Use the Fail2Ban client to confirm the service is responding and learn which jails are active. The client is the project’s control and configuration interface; its manual documents these status commands.
- Run
fail2ban-client statuson the server. Confirm that Fail2Ban responds and note the active jail names. - For a jail you want to chart, run
fail2ban-client status <jail>, replacing<jail>with its actual name, such assshdif that is configured on your system. - Check that the jail is monitoring the log and service you intend to observe. A dashboard cannot report activity from a jail that is absent or not configured for that source.
Run the dedicated exporter
The documented exporter reads /var/run/fail2ban/fail2ban.sock, listens on port 9191 and exposes metrics at /metrics. Prometheus must be able to reach that endpoint. How you install and run it depends on your Linux distribution, container runtime and Fail2Ban deployment, so verify the project’s current release instructions rather than assuming one package or command applies everywhere.
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When using the repository’s Docker example, mount the parent Fail2Ban runtime directory read-only so the container can find the socket. The project warns that mounting only the socket file can fail if Fail2Ban recreates it. Give the exporter only the access it needs, and restrict port 9191 to Prometheus or the intended monitoring network; do not expose it publicly.
Before starting the exporter, verify its maintenance status, release artifact, platform support, configuration options and socket permissions. Its metrics endpoint is a monitoring interface, not a reason to grant broad host access.
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Configure Prometheus to scrape the endpoint
Add the exporter host and port as a scrape target in your Prometheus configuration. The exact configuration file and reload procedure vary by installation; Prometheus’s Node Exporter guide shows the target workflow for an exporter endpoint. Use the hostname or address that the Prometheus server can actually reach, not an address that is valid only inside another container’s network.
- Ensure the exporter is running and that the Prometheus host can connect to its port.
- Add a scrape job for the exporter’s host and port, using the configuration format supported by your Prometheus deployment.
- Apply the configuration using your deployment’s normal validation and reload process.
- Check Prometheus’s target status. The target should be healthy before you build Grafana panels.
- Open the exporter’s
/metricsendpoint from an authorized network and confirm that it returns metrics. This also reveals the exact metric names and labels for the installed version.
Understand the available metrics
The hctrdev exporter repository documents the following metric families. Names and labels can differ among forks or versions, so treat the endpoint served by your installed exporter as authoritative before writing queries.
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| Metric or value | What it can show |
|---|---|
f2b_up, f2b_errors |
Exporter or Fail2Ban availability and reported errors. |
f2b_jail_count |
The number of jails reported by the exporter. |
f2b_jail_banned_current |
Current banned count for a jail. |
f2b_jail_banned_total |
Total bans reported for a jail. |
f2b_jail_failed_current |
Current failure count for a jail. |
f2b_jail_failed_total |
Total failures reported for a jail. |
| Ban time, find time, maximum retries and version metrics | Selected jail configuration values and exporter or Fail2Ban version information. |
Current counts and totals answer different questions: a current value describes the state reported now, while a total indicates accumulated activity as represented by that exporter and jail. Do not assume totals persist across restarts or configuration changes unless the exporter and Fail2Ban behavior for your deployment establish that.
Build Grafana panels from verified series
In Grafana, use the Prometheus data source that can query the Prometheus server scraping the exporter. Create panels for the questions you need to answer, such as current bans by jail, total bans, current failures and exporter availability. Use the metric names and label keys visible in your own /metrics output; do not copy a query from another exporter version without checking it.
The hctrdev project supplies a sample Grafana dashboard and states that it is compatible with Grafana 9.1.8 and above. That is the project’s stated compatibility floor, not a guarantee that every later Grafana environment or dashboard revision has been tested. Check the dashboard against your Grafana version and confirm its panels resolve to series in your Prometheus instance before relying on it.
Use the Node Exporter textfile collector instead
If Node Exporter is already deployed, a script can query Fail2Ban and write metric samples to the configured textfile-collector directory. This avoids running a separate HTTP exporter endpoint, but it shifts responsibility to the script and its update schedule.
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- Write valid Prometheus exposition-format data and use the filename and directory conventions configured for the textfile collector.
- Make sure the script can access the Fail2Ban client or socket, and that Node Exporter can read the generated file.
- Write files safely so Prometheus does not read a partially written update; use the approach recommended for your script and deployment.
- Choose and monitor an update schedule. A chart can be stale if the script stops running even while Node Exporter remains healthy.
Validate the charts safely
After the scrape target and dashboard are in place, confirm that the expected jail series appear and that Grafana panels return data. If you want to observe a changing counter, use only authorized, controlled test events in an environment and manner appropriate to your service. Do not create failed logins against systems you do not administer, and do not treat a chart change as proof of a real attack.
Quick Recap
- No series: Check target health, exporter logs, socket access, active jail names and the exact metric spelling and labels.
- Exporter target down: Check that the service is running, Prometheus can reach the host and port, and network rules allow the monitoring connection.
- Textfile values stale: Check the script schedule, its exit status, output file timestamp and file permissions.
- Dashboard panels empty: Compare the dashboard queries with the installed exporter’s
/metricsoutput and ensure Grafana is querying the Prometheus instance with this target.
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