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Fail2Ban

Fail2Ban is installed automatically and bans IP addresses for 3 hours after 3 failed attempts in 10 minutes by default.

Configuration files

If you want to change this, you can easily edit config/fail2ban-jail.cf.

You can do the same with the values from fail2ban.conf, e.g dbpurgeage. In that case you need to edit config/fail2ban-fail2ban.cf.

The configuration files need to be located at the root of the /tmp/docker-mailserver/ volume bind.

This following configuration files from /tmp/docker-mailserver/ will be copied at boot time.

  • fail2ban-jail.cf -> /etc/fail2ban/jail.d/user-jail.local
  • fail2ban-fail2ban.cf -> /etc/fail2ban/fail2ban.local

Docker-compose config

Example configuration volume bind:

    volumes:
      - ./config/:/tmp/docker-mailserver/

Attention

The mail container must be launched with the NET_ADMIN capability in order to be able to install the iptable rules that actually ban IP addresses.

Thus either include --cap-add=NET_ADMIN in the docker run commandline or the equivalent docker-compose.yml:

cap_add:
  - NET_ADMIN

If you don't you will see errors the form of:

iptables -w -X f2b-postfix -- stderr: "getsockopt failed strangely: Operation not permitted\niptables v1.4.21: can't initialize iptabl
es table `filter': Permission denied (you must be root)\nPerhaps iptables or your kernel needs to be upgraded.\niptables v1.4.21: can'
t initialize iptables table `filter': Permission denied (you must be root)\nPerhaps iptables or your kernel needs to be upgraded.\n"
2016-06-01 00:53:51,284 fail2ban.action         [678]: ERROR   iptables -w -D INPUT -p tcp -m multiport --dports smtp,465,submission -
j f2b-postfix

Manage bans

You can also manage and list the banned IPs with the setup.sh script.

List bans

./setup.sh debug fail2ban

Un-ban

Here 192.168.1.15 is our banned IP.

./setup.sh debug fail2ban unban 192.168.1.15
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