Osquery uses basic SQL commands to leverage a relational data-model to describe a device.

osquery

As soon as I change it back to the original, it stops working.

check all your config and packs for same name?  Maybe it's defined elsewhere and it's overriding it.

Also, is it running in differential or snapshot mode? If it's running in differential mode you should expect to only see each result logged once.

I actually only have that one running to narrow it down, so I don't think it's a name collision.

It's differential but it stops completely.  When I change the query name, it behaves the way I'd expect (there are new network connections often).

I even changed the database_path (and restarted osqueryd) and it still doesn't work.

Is there any state stored outside of the DB?

There should not be any state stored outside the DB.