What effect does setting database.network.expire to 0 have?

Schrodingers-cat · May 2, 2026, 1:24pm

What happens when the number of days to retain the network_addresses table is set to 0?

Would it remove all entries every day?

rdwebdesign · May 2, 2026, 3:43pm

This will effectively disable the option. The network records in the database will never expire. They will never be cleaned.

From the source code (click here to see the complete function):

github.com/pi-hole/FTL

src/database/network-table.c

e1b4c1d52


      
          * The time limit for these operations is determined by the configuration setting
          * `config.database.network.expire.v.ui`. If this setting is zero, the function
          * will not perform any cleaning and will return true immediately.

Schrodingers-cat · May 3, 2026, 1:24pm

Thanks rdwebdesign.

Shouldn't that information be added to the database.network.expire information/instructions in the web interface and pihole.toml?

DanSchaper · May 3, 2026, 1:39pm

Your original post mentions number of days to retain which is different than how often to expire. Additional documentation might be helpful but typically setting an expire period to 0 means never expire.