Provisioned dashboard edits silently lost after restart

Grafana dashboard provisioning is designed to load dashboards from YAML files at startup, but the default behavior still permits modifications through the UI. When a team relies on version-controlled files as the source of truth, the split between the file-based definition and the live database state creates uncertainty about which version is authoritative after a restart.

The exact persistence behavior depends on the Grafana version, the dashboard provider configuration, and whether duplicate UIDs or removed files are involved. Without inspecting the effective provisioning settings and startup logs, it is difficult to determine whether UI edits will be discarded, retained, or overwritten by a conflicting file.

What diagnostic signals in the Grafana server logs and database indicate that a provisioned dashboard has drifted from its file definition? How does the allowUiUpdates setting interact with restart behavior across supported Grafana versions? If two provisioning files declare the same dashboard UID, what deterministic or non-deterministic load-order rules apply when directory contents change?