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Managing hosts

Once you've onboarded hosts, the PatchBase dashboard gives you a single view of your fleet. Here's how to use it.

Dashboard overview​

The main dashboard shows:

  • Total hosts — how many hosts are registered
  • Need attention — hosts with available updates or pending advisories
  • Reboot queue — hosts where a kernel update has been installed but the system hasn't rebooted
  • Unknown / investigate — hosts where advisory matching couldn't determine a clear status
  • Total advisories — how many security advisories are currently matched across all hosts
  • Recent advisories — the latest advisories published by upstream distributions

Host list​

The hosts page shows every registered host with:

  • Display name and hostname
  • OS family, name, version, and architecture
  • Status (approved, pending)
  • Vulnerability counts by severity (critical, important, moderate)
  • Available updates count
  • Whether a reboot or restart is needed
  • Last seen timestamp

Click any host to see its detail page.

Host detail page​

Each host has a detail page showing:

  • System info — OS, kernel, architecture, last boot time, agent version
  • Vulnerable packages — packages matched against advisories, with the advisory ID and severity
  • Upgradable packages — packages with newer versions available
  • Kernel posture — whether the running kernel matches the latest installed kernel
  • Pull job history (SSH pull mode only) — recent collection runs and their status
  • Latest snapshot — raw snapshot data

Approving pending hosts​

Hosts that register via the agent appear in Pending status. Go to Hosts → Pending to review and approve them. Until approved, a host can't send snapshots.

This prevents unwanted hosts from registering with a stolen registration token.

Deleting a host​

From the host detail page, you can delete a host. This removes all its data — snapshots, pull jobs, and access tokens. The action is irreversible.

For SSH pull hosts, deleting also removes the periodic pull job from the scheduler.

Registration tokens​

Registration tokens are used by agents to enroll. You can create multiple tokens (e.g., one per team or environment) and revoke them when no longer needed. A token that's been revoked can't be used for new registrations, but already-enrolled hosts continue to work.

Create tokens from Hosts → Register → Tokens.