Loki log retention policy and period

Grafana Loki
,
1

Hey Folks,

I have configured a log retention policy in Loki to store logs for 30days, but someway somehow my logs are being kept for only 10 days.

For instance, today’s date is 2025-06-27 and based on my configured log retention policy, I should be able to query logs as far back as 2025-06-01, but I can only get logs up to 2025-06-17 which seems to me the logs in loki are only retained for 10days.

What is the issue here and how can I fix this?
Reference doc: Log retention | Grafana Loki documentation

This is my loki retention configuration:

limits_config:
  metric_aggregation_enabled: true
  ingestion_rate_mb: 10
  ingestion_burst_size_mb: 20
  ingestion_rate_strategy: global
  retention_period: 720h

compactor:
  working_directory: /tmp/loki/compactor
  compaction_interval: 10m
  retention_enabled: true
  retention_delete_delay: 2h
  retention_delete_worker_count: 150
  delete_request_store: filesystem

schema_config:
  configs:
    - from: 2020-10-24
      store: tsdb
      object_store: filesystem
      schema: v13
      index:
        prefix: index_
        period: 24h
2
  1. Can you share your entire configuration, please?
  2. Do you see logs from compactor that it’s actually deleting chunk files?
  3. Since you are using filesystem, do you have any local filesystem clean up process?
3

This is my entire configuration

auth_enabled: false

server:
  http_listen_port: <port>
  grpc_listen_port: <port>
  log_level: info
  grpc_server_max_concurrent_streams: 1000

common:
  instance_addr: <localhost>
  path_prefix: /tmp/loki
  storage:
    filesystem:
      chunks_directory: /tmp/loki/chunks
      rules_directory: /tmp/loki/rules
  replication_factor: 1
  ring:
    kvstore:
      store: inmemory

query_range:
  results_cache:
    cache:
      embedded_cache:
        enabled: true
        max_size_mb: 100

limits_config:
  metric_aggregation_enabled: true
  ingestion_rate_mb: 10
  ingestion_burst_size_mb: 20
  ingestion_rate_strategy: global
  retention_period: 720h

compactor:
  working_directory: /tmp/loki/compactor
  compaction_interval: 10m 
  retention_enabled: true
  retention_delete_delay: 2h
  retention_delete_worker_count: 150
  delete_request_store: filesystem

schema_config:
  configs:
    - from: 2020-10-24
      store: tsdb
      object_store: filesystem
      schema: v13
      index:
        prefix: index_
        period: 24h

pattern_ingester:
  enabled: true
  metric_aggregation:
    loki_address: localhost:<port>

ruler:
  alertmanager_url: http://localhost:<port>

frontend:
  encoding: protobuf

# querier:
#   engine:
#     enable_multi_variant_queries: true

# Optional: disable anonymous reporting
# analytics:
#   reporting_enabled: false

In my compactor, I see some delete items in the directory, the content in the “deletion” file is binary so i’m not sure if the deletion is actually happening

[root@ip-10-0-0-41 compactor]# du -sh * 
0	delete_requests
16K	deletion
0	retention

And to answer your third question, I do not have any local filesystem clean up process

4

I would advise you first to change your chunks and rules directories to something other than /tmp.

5

I have updated the chunk and rules directory to /etc/loki and also changed the retention policy to 3 days so that it can be easily verified if there have been any change. I will keep this thread updated of the results after 5 days (on Friday).

This is my current configuration:

auth_enabled: false

server:
  http_listen_port: <port>
  grpc_listen_port: <port>
  log_level: info
  grpc_server_max_concurrent_streams: 1000

common:
  instance_addr: <localhost>
  path_prefix: /etc/loki
  storage:
    filesystem:
      chunks_directory: /etc/loki/chunks
      rules_directory: /etc/loki/rules
  replication_factor: 1
  ring:
    kvstore:
      store: inmemory

query_range:
  results_cache:
    cache:
      embedded_cache:
        enabled: true
        max_size_mb: 100

limits_config:
  metric_aggregation_enabled: true
  ingestion_rate_mb: 10
  ingestion_burst_size_mb: 20
  ingestion_rate_strategy: global
  retention_period: 72h

compactor:
  working_directory: /etc/loki/compactor
  compaction_interval: 10m
  retention_enabled: true
  retention_delete_delay: 2h
  retention_delete_worker_count: 150
  delete_request_store: filesystem

schema_config:
  configs:
    - from: 2020-10-24
      store: tsdb
      object_store: filesystem
      schema: v13
      index:
        prefix: index_
        period: 24h

pattern_ingester:
  enabled: true
  metric_aggregation:
    loki_address: localhost:<port>

ruler:
  alertmanager_url: http://localhost:<port>

frontend:
  encoding: protobuf

# querier:
#   engine:
#     enable_multi_variant_queries: true

# Optional: disable anonymous reporting
# analytics:
#   reporting_enabled: false