Problem Description
I get locked out of my FreedomBox server periodically by fail2ban. This started happening after I performed a complete backup from a previous FreedomBox installation on failing hardware. After the complete backup, I started with a fresh installation of Debian 13 “Trixie”, and then installed FreedomBox on new hardware. After that, I restored the complete backup from the old hardware to the new hardware. The whole process went smoothly, no errors.
Steps to Reproduce
- Log into FreedomBox Server, specifically in my WordPress application on the new hardware, or accessing Radicale from Thunderbird on another workstation on my LAN.
- When I am editing articles in WordPress, it periodically locks out my ability to edit my blog.
- If I run sudo fail2ban-client set apache-auth unbanip 192.168.x.x, and sudo fail2ban-client set wordpress-freedombox unbanip 192.168.x.x, via ssh, I can start editing again as normal, and can use my radicale calendars as well.
- I also notice that Radicale authentication errors are occurring in the logs when I run sudo journalctl -xe. This happens when I am trying to access radicale through Thunderbird from another workstation on the LAN - my login credentials work ok initially, but after a period of time, it fails.
Expected Results
I expected that restoring a backup to a new installation of FreedomBox on new hardware would work normally.
Actual results
I get error messages in the system logs on my FreedomBox server, especially if I leave Thunderbird open on my workstation on the LAN. I suspect this has something to do with Thunderbird periodically polling the radicale application on the FreedomBox server for calendar updates.
One thing I did notice is that none of the user accounts were migrated from the old FreedomBox installation on the old hardware, so I had to create a new user account under the same username on the new hardware, and changed the password for that new user account, but I also updated the new user account password in Thunderbird on the workstation on the LAN, and it allowed me to access my radicale calendars. I’m wondering, does this have to do with the LDAP database, maybe? Apache-auth errors seem to come up a lot as well in the logs, but all from the same IP address - my LAN workstation’s IP.
Also, I can ssh into the new FreedomBox hardware with no problems with full sudo permissions, only the FreedomBox portion of things is affected by this issue.
Screenshots
Sanitized Logs Paste Links
That is the output of sudo journalctl -xe | grep radicale.
That is the output of sudo journalctl -xe | grep fail2ban
Information
- FreedomBox version: Debian GNU/Linux 13 (Trixie) and FreedomBox version 26.6.
- Hardware: StarFive VisionFive2
- How did you install FreedomBox?: ‘apt install freedombox’ after fresh install of Debian 13, “Trixie”