Whitelist an IP address in fail2ban

If you need to whitelist an IP address in fail2ban, you can do so by following these simple steps.

Edit /etc/fail2ban/jail.conf in your favorite text editor

Search for the following section.  It should be near the top of the file:

[DEFAULT]

# “ignoreip” can be an IP address, a CIDR mask or a DNS host. Fail2ban will not
# ban a host which matches an address in this list. Several addresses can be
# defined using space separator.
ignoreip = 127.0.0.1/8

Add your IP address to the ignoreip line.  This line is space delimited.  so like this:

ignoreip = 127.0.0.1/8 192.168.0.1 8.8.8.8

Once you have done this, go ahead and restart fail2ban with “service fail2ban restart” and you are all set.