How to develop for Fail2Ban

Fail2Ban uses GIT (http://git-scm.com/) distributed source control. This gives each developer their own complete copy of the entire repository. Developers can add and switch branches and commit changes when ever they want and then ask a maintainer to merge their changes.

Fail2Ban uses GitHub (https://github.com/fail2ban/fail2ban) to manage access to the Git repository. GitHub provides free hosting for open-source projects as well as a web-based Git repository browser and an issue tracker.

If you are familiar with Python and you have a bug fix or a feature that you would like to add to Fail2Ban, the best way to do so it to use the GitHub Pull Request feature. You can find more details on the Fail2Ban wiki (http://www.fail2ban.org/wiki/index.php/Get_Involved)

Pull Requests

When submitting pull requests on GitHub we ask you to:

  • Clearly describe the problem you’re solving;
  • Don’t introduce regressions that will make it hard for systems administrators to update;
  • If adding a major feature rebase your changes on master and get to a single commit;
  • Include test cases (see below);
  • Include sample logs (if relevant);
  • Include a change to the relevant section of the ChangeLog; and
  • Include yourself in THANKS if not already there.

If you are developing filters see the FILTERS file for documentation.

Code Testing

Existing tests can be run by executing bin/fail2ban-testcases. It has options like –log-level that will probably be useful. Run bin/fail2ban-testcases –help for the full list of options.

Test cases should cover all usual cases, all exception cases and all inside / outside boundary conditions.

Test cases should cover all branches. The coverage tool will help identify missing branches. Also see http://nedbatchelder.com/code/coverage/branch.html for more details.

Install the package python-coverage to visualise your test coverage. Run the following (note: on Debian-based systems, the script is called python-coverage):

coverage run bin/fail2ban-testcases
coverage html

Then look at htmlcov/index.html and see how much coverage your test cases exert over the code base. Full coverage is a good thing however it may not be complete. Try to ensure tests cover as many independent paths through the code.

Manual Execution. To run in a development environment do:

./fail2ban-client -c config/ -s /tmp/f2b.sock -i start

some quick commands:

status
add test pyinotify
status test
set test addaction iptables
set test actionban iptables echo <ip> <cidr> >> /tmp/ban
set test actionunban iptables echo <ip> <cidr> >> /tmp/unban
get test actionban iptables
get test actionunban iptables
set test banip 192.168.2.2
status test

Coding Standards

Style

Please use tabs for now. Keep to 80 columns, at least for readable text.

Tests

Add tests. They should test all the code you add in a meaning way.

Coverage

Test coverage should always increase as you add code.

You may use “# pragma: no cover” in the code for branches of code that support older versions on python. For all other uses of “pragma: no cover” or “pragma: no branch” document the reason why its not covered. “I haven’t written a test case” isn’t a sufficient reason.

pyflakes

pyflakes can be used to find unused imports, and unused, undefined and redefined variables. pyflakes should be run in any python code, including python based actions:

pyflakes bin/ config/ fail2ban/

Documentation

Ensure this documentation is up to date after changes. Also ensure that the man pages still are accurate. Ensure that there is sufficient documentation for your new features to be used.

Bugs

Remove them and don’t add any more.

Git

Use the following tags in your commit messages:

  • ‘BF:’ for bug fixes
  • ‘DOC:’ for documentation fixes
  • ‘ENH:’ for enhancements
  • ‘TST:’ for commits concerning tests only (thus not touching the main code-base)

Multiple tags could be joined with +, e.g. “BF+TST:”.

Use the text “closes #333”/”resolves #333 “/”fixes #333” where 333 represents an issue that is closed. Other text and details in link below. See: https://help.github.com/articles/closing-issues-via-commit-messages

If merge resulted in conflicts, clarify what changes were done to corresponding files in the ‘Conflicts:’ section of the merge commit message. See e.g. https://github.com/fail2ban/fail2ban/commit/f5a8a8ac

Adding Actions

If you add an action.d/*.conf file also add a example in config/jail.conf with enabled=false and maxretry=5 for ssh.

Design

Fail2Ban was initially developed with Python 2.3 (IIRC). It should still be compatible with Python 2.4 and such compatibility assurance makes code ... old-fashioned in many places (RF-Note). In 0.7 the design went through major re-factoring into client/server, a-thread-per-jail design which made it a bit difficult to follow. Below you can find a sketchy description of the main components of the system to orient yourself better.

server/

Core classes hierarchy (feel welcome to draw a better/more complete one):

->   inheritance
+    delegation
*    storage of multiple instances

RF-Note   just a note which might be useful to address while doing RF

JailThread -> Filter -> FileFilter -> {FilterPoll, FilterPyinotify, ...}
              |         * FileContainer
              + FailManager
              + DateDetector
                          + Jail (provided in __init__) which contains this Filter
                (used for passing tickets from FailManager to Jail's __queue)
Server
  + Jails
     * Jail
       + Filter  (in __filter)
       * tickets (in __queue)
       + Actions (in __action)
         * Action
         + BanManager

failmanager.py

FailManager

Keeps track of failures, recorded as ‘tickets’. All operations are done via acquiring a lock

FailManagerEmpty(Exception)

raised by FailManager.toBan after reaching the list of tickets (RF-Note: asks to become a generator ;) )

filter.py

Filter(JailThread)

Wraps (non-threaded) FailManager (and proxies to it quite a bit), and provides all primary logic for processing new lines, what IPs to ignore, etc

.failManager [FailManager] .dateDetector [DateDetector] .__failRegex [list] .__ignoreRegex [list]

Contains regular expressions for failures and ignores
.__findTime [numeric]
Used in processLineAndAdd to skip old lines

FileFilter(Filter):

Files-aware Filter

.__logPath [list]
keeps the tracked files (added 1-by-1 using addLogPath) stored as FileContainer’s
.getFailures

actually just returns True

if managed to open and get lines (until empty)
False
if failed to open or absent container matching the filename

FileContainer

Adapter for a file to deal with log rotation.

.open,.close,.readline
RF-Note: readline returns “” with handler absent... shouldn’t it be None?
.__pos
Keeps the position pointer

dnsutils.py

DNSUtils

Utility class for DNS and IP handling

filter*.py

Implementations of FileFilter’s for specific backends. Derived classes should provide an implementation of run and usually override addLogPath, delLogPath methods. In run() method they all one way or another provide

try:
while True:
ticket = self.failManager.toBan() self.jail.putFailTicket(ticket)
except FailManagerEmpty:
self.failManager.cleanup(MyTime.time())

thus channelling “ban tickets” from their failManager to the corresponding jail.

action.py

Takes care about executing start/check/ban/unban/stop commands