5. Reload the Jails

It should be this simple:

fail2ban-client reload

root@example:~# fail2ban-client reload
OK
root@example:~# 

However, you might get an error. For example:

root@example:~# fail2ban-client reload
2023-05-30 03:32:57,425 fail2ban                [1743]: ERROR   Could not find server
root@example:~# 

This usually means fail2ban isn’t running (although there are lots of other errors you can get too), so the first thing to try is starting fail2ban.