Fail2ban is failing

Friday, 3 May 2024

F40 fully updated.

   # systemctl status fail2ban
   × fail2ban.service - Fail2Ban Service
        Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/fail2ban.service; enabled; preset:
disabled)
       Drop-In: /usr/lib/systemd/system/service.d
                └─10-timeout-abort.conf
        Active: failed (Result: exit-code) since Fri 2024-05-03 11:56:20 BST; 29min ago
      Duration: 30.380s
          Docs: man:fail2ban(1)
       Process: 19362 ExecStartPre=/bin/mkdir -p /run/fail2ban (code=exited,
status=0/SUCCESS)
       Process: 19364 ExecStart=/usr/bin/fail2ban-server -xf start (code=exited,
status=255/EXCEPTION)
      Main PID: 19364 (code=exited, status=255/EXCEPTION)
           CPU: 172ms

   May 03 11:55:50 Bree systemd[1]: Starting fail2ban.service - Fail2Ban Service...
   May 03 11:55:50 Bree systemd[1]: Started fail2ban.service - Fail2Ban Service.
   May 03 11:56:20 Bree systemd[1]: fail2ban.service: Main process exited, code=exited,
status=255/EXCEPTION

Also:

   # fail2ban-client status sshd
   2024-05-03 12:28:41,129 fail2ban                [22672]: ERROR   Failed to access
socket path: /var/run/fail2ban/fail2ban.sock. Is fail2ban running?

I updated to 1.0.2-13 from updates-testing. Made no difference.

For completeness:

   # fail2ban-client -t
   OK: configuration test is successful

Any thoughts? I've been using f2b for a while and it has worked so far.
My configuration hasn't changed in any way.

poc