Welcome to Exosphere

Exosphere offers aggregated patch and security update reporting as well as basic system status across multiple Unix-like hosts via SSH.

Exosphere demo

It is targeted at small to medium sized networks.

It is meant to be simple to deploy and use, requiring no central server, agents or complex dependencies on remote hosts.

If you have SSH access to the hosts with an agent, you are good to go!

Key Features

• Rich interactive command line interface (CLI)

• Text-based user interface (TUI) offering menus, tables and dashboards

• Consistent view across different platforms and package managers

• See everything in one spot, at a glance, without complex automation or enterprise solutions.

• Document-based reporting in HTML, text or markdown format

• JSON output available for integration with other tools

Compatibility

• Exosphere: Linux, BSDs, macOS, Windows (and more!)

• Remote: Debian/Ubuntu-likes, RedHat-Likes, FreeBSD, OpenBSD

Note

For more details on supported platforms, see the Supported Remote Platforms page.

Exosphere is written in Python and abstracts away the technical details of collecting this information across platforms, allowing you to focus on management of your systems.

You can get started with Installation and then follow up with the Quickstart Guide to get an overview of how to use Exosphere.

The Configuration File details are also available, alongside the Exosphere API Reference if you wish to implement your own providers.

Getting Started

• How Exosphere Works
  • Overview
  • Concepts
  • Usage Lifecycle
  • What Exosphere Is Not
• Installation
  • Supported Platforms
  • Installing from PyPI
  • Installing from Git Repository
• Updating Exosphere
  • Release Notes
  • From PyPI
  • From Git Repository
• Quickstart Guide
  • Next Steps
• Supported Remote Platforms
  • Compatibility List
  • Common Prerequisites
• What’s New?
  • 3.0.0 - Reboots, Palettes, Sorting and refreshed CLI

Using Exosphere

• Command Line Interface (CLI)
  • Basic Usage
  • Getting help
  • Initial Inventory Discovery
  • Refreshing Host State
  • Viewing Inventory Status
  • Viewing Host Details and Updates
  • Online Checks
  • Viewing Configuration details
  • Editing the configuration file
  • Viewing the state of SSH connections
  • Launching the Text-based User Interface
  • Return Codes
  • Beyond the Basics
• Text User Interface (TUI)
  • Launching the UI
  • Interface Navigation
  • Executing Operations
  • The Command Palette
  • The Dashboard
  • Inventory Screen
  • Logs Screen
• Reporting and JSON Export
  • Available Formats
  • Basic Usage
  • Advanced Options
  • Report Content
  • Status Summary
  • JSON Schema Details
  • Integration Examples

Administration

• Connections and Authentication
  • Connecting to systems
  • Using SSH Agents
  • Testing connectivity
  • SSH Pipelining
• The Configuration File
  • Location
  • Structure
  • Environment Variables
  • Options
  • Inventory
• Sudo Policies and Privileges
  • Enumerating Providers and their Privileges
  • Configuring Sudo Policies
  • Generating a Sudoers configuration
  • How can I check what the effective Sudo Policy is for a given host?
• Managing Cache
  • Clearing the Cache

Support

• Troubleshooting Guide
  • Check the logs
  • Turn up the verbosity
  • Check the configuration Exosphere actually loaded
  • Test connectivity
  • Common situations
  • When to look at the providers
  • Still stuck?
• Frequently Asked Questions
  • General Questions
  • Platform Support
  • Configuration and Customization
  • Troubleshooting
• Getting Help
  • Before reaching out
  • Asking a question
  • Reporting a bug
  • Feature requests and ideas

Reference

• Providers
  • Debian/Ubuntu (Apt)
  • RedHat-Likes (Yum/DNF)
  • FreeBSD (Pkg)
  • OpenBSD (pkg_add)
• CLI Command Reference
  • inventory
  • host
  • connections
  • ui
  • configuration
  • report
  • sudo
  • version
• Glossary and Common Terms
• Release Notes
  • 3.0.0 - Reboots, Palettes, Sorting and refreshed CLI
  • 2.4.3 - Hotfix Release
  • 2.4.2 - Bugfix Release
  • 2.4.1 - Red Hat Provider Bugfix Release
  • 2.4.0 - Sudo, FreeBSD vuln.xml improvements
  • 2.3.0 - Maintenance Release
  • 2.2.0 - SSH Pipelining and Spring Cleanup
  • 2.1.2 - Optional hotfix
  • 2.1.1 - Hotfix
  • 2.1.0 - The Big Quality Release
  • 2.0.1 - Hotfix Release
  • 2.0.0 - CLI exit codes and Python 3.14 Support
  • v1.5.1 - Minor QoL Update
  • 1.5.0 - The Reporting Update
  • 1.4.1 - Hotfix Release
  • 1.4.0 - OpenBSD Support
  • 1.3.5 - Optional Documentation Hotfix
  • 1.3.4 - Provider reposync enhancements
  • 1.3.3 - FreeBSD Bugfix Release
  • 1.3.2 - Bugfix Release
  • 1.3.1 - Optional Hotfix
  • 1.3.0 - Supporting the Unsupported Release
  • 1.2.0 - The Reactive UI release
  • 1.1.0 - The Fancy CLI Release
  • 1.0.1 - Bugfix release
  • 1.0 - Initial Public Release
  • Initial Pre-Release

Developer Documentation

• Exosphere API Reference
  • Exosphere configuration
  • Package Manager Provider API
  • Data Classes
  • Exosphere objects
  • Reporting Interfaces