Default changelog retention at zero in Netbox 4.4 and above

[MarianRychtecky]

In versions before 4.4, the housekeeping script was external (cron). We deliberately didn’t run it because we wanted to preserve the entire change history.

• Starting with 4.4, housekeeping became part of the NetBox scheduler, including automatic cleanup of changelog entries past the default 90-day retention.

• The day after upgrading, the scheduler attempted to delete our full history (~1.3M records) except the last 90 days.

I suggest keeping the default changelog retention at 0 (no automatic purge), rather than 90 days, to avoid surprises like this.

[jeremystretch]

The housekeeping script is part of the NetBox application and should be run regularly per the documentation. If you want to preserve all changelog history, you need to set the CHANGELOG_RETENTION configuration parameter to 0.

[MarianRychtecky]

Hi Jeremy,
The point here is that when upgrading from below 4.4 to 4.4 and above, you'll suddenly experience a behaviour change, and Netbox will attempt (or delete) history without warning.

• In versions below 4.4, if you didn’t run the housekeeping cron, nothing was deleted. So CHANGELOG_RETENTION didn’t really matter.

• After upgrading to 4.4+, housekeeping runs as part of the built-in scheduler, and the default kicks in: only 90 days of history are kept. This can cause users to lose their historical changelog data suddenly.

My point here is to set CHANGELOG_RETENTION = 0 for Netbox 4.4 and above, because the default behaviour for change log history has changed.

[jeremystretch]

you'll suddenly experience a behaviour change

Again, the default behavior is to run the housekeeping script daily per the documentation. Only the mechanism by which it is being run has changed.

[MarianRychtecky]

My point is that before 4.4, many users never ran housekeeping intentionally to retain full history. After the upgrade, housekeeping is enforced automatically, which effectively changes behaviour: history is now deleted even if they previously chose not to run the script.

That’s why I suggested setting CHANGELOG_RETENTION = 0 by default for 4.4 and above, so that upgrades don’t unexpectedly cause data loss.

I just wanted to highlight this for your consideration — whether you decide to act on it is, of course, up to you.

[jeremystretch]

many users never ran housekeeping intentionally to retain full history.

These users have then assumed a risk in not fully installing the application. The housekeeping script does much more than clean up expired changelog entries; it is a required part of the application. This is why the configuration parameter is provided.