APT upgrade fail2ban

Question

I am trying to update Fail2Ban to include more recent changes they've included (specifically, catching Apache's Primary Script Unknown) errors.

I am using Ubuntu 18 on a digital ocean droplet. When I try to apt-install, it is telling me that I already have the latest version, despite the facts that there are dozens of merged PRs in the repository that I don't have.

I run

apt update
apt upgrade
apt dist-upgrade
apt install fail2ban

And get:

fail2ban is already the newest version (0.10.2-2).

If I run, apt-cache policy fail2ban it tells me that 0.10.2-2 is the version it has.

How can I get the latest version from apt-get without cloning directly from git?

Answer 1

Not every application in Ubuntu will receive updates.

The update policy is explained here.

apt-cache showpkg fail2ban shows that fail2ban comes from the "universe" repository (extended open-source packages) and as such is not part of the base system and therefore has no maintenance commitment.

If you want an up-to-date version of you application, you have to do it outside of the Canonical repos:, which means, in decreasing easiness order:

• find a PPA that you add to your software sources (it's just and additional repo)(none for fail2ban)
• find a downloadable .deb that you can install with APT (none for fail2ban)
• install manually (which seems to be the way).

As a side note, this shows that there won't be major upgrades of fail2ban if you get a more recent Ubuntu.

Answer 2

According to the official package list, 0.10.2-2 is the latest version packaged for Ubuntu 18. Unless somebody provides a package e.g. using a ppa there is no way to install it with apt install