Descobri isso,
O problema era que eu tinha uma configuração de cadeia personalizada para um serviço diferente e não estava configurada corretamente e que estava impedindo o fail2ban de iniciar corretamente.
Então, quando eu corri "service fail2ban status", eu pegava isso antes de consertar a outra cadeia:
● fail2ban.service - LSB: Start/stop fail2ban
Loaded: loaded (/etc/init.d/fail2ban)
Active: active (exited) since Mon 2016-01-25 18:41:50 EST; 3s ago
Process: 11673 ExecStop=/etc/init.d/fail2ban stop (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
Process: 11683 ExecStart=/etc/init.d/fail2ban start (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
Jan 25 18:41:50 PI2 fail2ban[11683]: Starting authentication failure monitor: fail2banERROR No file(s) found for glob /wrong/way/service.log #edit to your needs
Jan 25 18:41:50 PI2 fail2ban[11683]: ERROR Failed during configuration: Have not found any log file for service jail
Jan 25 18:41:50 PI2 fail2ban[11683]: failed!
Jan 25 18:41:50 PI2 systemd[1]: Started LSB: Start/stop fail2ban.
Depois de corrigi-lo:
● fail2ban.service - LSB: Start/stop fail2ban
Loaded: loaded (/etc/init.d/fail2ban)
Active: active (running) since Mon 2016-01-25 18:43:03 EST; 3s ago
Process: 11774 ExecStop=/etc/init.d/fail2ban stop (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
Process: 11784 ExecStart=/etc/init.d/fail2ban start (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
CGroup: /system.slice/fail2ban.service
└─11795 /usr/bin/python /usr/bin/fail2ban-server -b -s /var/run/fail2ban/fail2ban.sock -p /var/run/fail2ban/fail2ban.pid
Jan 25 18:43:03 PI2 fail2ban[11784]: Starting authentication failure monitor: fail2ban.
Jan 25 18:43:03 PI2 systemd[1]: Started LSB: Start/stop fail2ban.