# Did i successfully change retention policy?

**URL:** <https://community.influxdata.com/t/did-i-successfully-change-retention-policy/2318>\
**Category:** Systems\
**Tags:** influxdb\
**Created:** [September 10, 2017, 8:30pm UTC](https://community.influxdata.com/t/did-i-successfully-change-retention-policy/2318 "2017-09-10T20:30:42Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![dejan7](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b77776/32.png) [@dejan7](https://community.influxdata.com/u/dejan7)\
**Post date:** [September 10, 2017, 8:30pm UTC](https://community.influxdata.com/t/did-i-successfully-change-retention-policy/2318/1 "2017-09-10T20:30:42Z")

</div>

I’ve created a database without any retention policy. A bit later i decided to add one so i ran the command:

```
>create retention policy "2day" on "substation" DURATION 2d REPLICATION 1

```

And then when i run:

```
> show retention policies;
name duration shardGroupDuration replicaN default
---- -------- ------------------ -------- -------
autogen 0s 168h0m0s 1 true
2day 48h0m0s 24h0m0s 1 false

```

This isn’t clear enough to me - is my new RP active, how does this exactly work? I wonder because the “default” is set to false.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![sbains](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/cdc98d/32.png) [@sbains](https://community.influxdata.com/u/sbains)\
**Post date:** [September 11, 2017, 9:32pm UTC](https://community.influxdata.com/t/did-i-successfully-change-retention-policy/2318/2 "2017-09-11T21:32:46Z")

</div>

Please view the documentation:

If you are changing the default policy - you need to use the alter command (rather than create). If you are creating a new default policy; the command should end with the default keyword like:

> create retention policy “2day” on “substation” DURATION 2d REPLICATION 1 default

> **[Manage your database using InfluxQL | InfluxDB OSS v1 Documentation](https://docs.influxdata.com/influxdb/v1/query_language/database_management/)**
>
> Use InfluxQL to administer your InfluxDB server and work with InfluxDB databases, retention policies, series, measurements, and shards.