I installed fail2ban for added security and managed to get everything set up right, it seems. One question though. I noticed that /var/log/fail2ban.log date format is different from my targeted log files (i.e /var/log/mail.log, /var/log/apache2/error.log, etc).

Ex. /var/log/fail2ban.log

2009-05-20 07:19:51,490 fail2ban.filter : INFO Set maxRetry = 3

Ex. /var/log/mail.log

May 20 12:49:42 pono postfix/smtpd[10432]: connect from unknown[123.456.7.89]

Do the different date/time formats the the logs make a difference? Would this prevent fail2ban from banning ip's?

If so, what can i do to fix this, is there a setting in one of fail2ban conf files that I can change? Or should I change the global server date/time format settings?

Thank you , any help will be appreciated.

Forgot to mention,

Distro: Debian 5.0 Lenny

No. Logs are for your eyes only, and have no purpose other than you reading them (and possibly analyzing them with a tool).