/config/active is a textual representation of the configuration, but the actual configuration is a sqlite database.
It's internal structure is not documented and, generally speaking, we do not support directly editing it except thru clish/WebUI commands.
Occasionally, such as in the thread you linked, you can use dbget/dbset to try and resolve database inconsistencies.
Generally, the use of dbget and dbset is unsupported.
See: How to use dbget and dbset on Gaia OS
