No, everything related to Pi-hole is local.
In January on the last incident (database is locked) it was roughly 2.7 GB.
No, nothing on Pi-hole's setup has changed recently, only regular maintenance (updates).
No need to speculate here: on the same host running Pi-hole there are other services, which from time to time produce a bit of load. Nothing too exhaustive/excessive (regularly on cron-jobs like at midnight, which does not match Pi-hole's load warnings); Pi-hole's load warnings are way to aggressive imo (getting off-topic).
Interestingly, there's no pattern (database locks don't match a particular "high load situation"). But to be honest there are too little incidents to give that last sentence weight.
1st statement:
|1644755728|10826
(null)|1635882387|4
(null).home.net|1635882387|2
*google.com|1641749868|36
---n6n371pfsn2q0x.66v2aeydyw-ukw6--0hqg.com|1608811725|2
-15zn4p3r0mic800d.3yghrd1aih4k0.com|1633799527|2
-4yq85be2ijpp.8ehuh7apyat.com|1624043562|2
-5annkty.vtidh9mc7tud9g2p-k5n4.com|1619440260|2
-5tc8ofjjf-2.2x-do8pnas.com|1632427312|2
-acgvvpf05.bt5q1v5k87g1fh9.com|1620672117|2
- replaced actual one with "home.net"
- no idea what domains the others are - are those actual domains? looks a bit like darknet or malformed stuff
2nd statement:
|1644756031|19965784
17|1644755728|10719
a1051.b.akamai.net|1622311064|30
aax-eu-retail-direct.amazon-adsystem.com|1644753708|6545
ads4.admatic.com.tr|1635729223|1
adserver-2084671375.us-east-1.elb.amazonaws.com|1644623103|5
adservingvpc-1239633584.eu-west-1.elb.amazonaws.com|1642971853|4
ams02-convex.dotomi.com|1601803741|1
ams1-ib.adnxs.com|1644751851|27
api.dropbox.com|1622331957|9
- what to do with that output/this information?
I don't think there's something accessing the query database directly. What I use around the Pi-hole eco-system is:
- PADD - locally, very rarely
- Pihole adlist tool - locally, maybe 5 times a year
- Home Assistant integration - doing API calls, constantly