On the server, there is a daemon called the 'feeder' which loads more tasks into a shared memory segment every second. The shared memory segment can store up to 1000 tasks. When the scheduler receives a request from a client to fetch new tasks to work on, the scheduler only looks at this shared memory segment for tasks that it considers for sending. This is done because at any given time there are up to 1 million tasks available to send for a project. If the scheduler hit the database directly to search for tasks to send on each request, then the load on the database would be overwhelming.

The shared memory is divided into 'slots' that are allocated to the different projects that we have active. Only a task for that project can be assigned to a specific slot.

There are certain times each day when the slots for a given project in the shared memory segment becomes "full" of tasks that are designated for a particular platform (Linux or Windows). These usually only last a few minutes or seconds, but can sometimes last up to 30 minutes.

If for example, you are running Linux and the slots assigned to MCM1 are full of tasks that are already assigned to Windows, then the server will treat it as no work is available for MCM1 for you. (This is what triggers the 'tasks are assigned to another platform' message). If you have the 'send other' work flag checked, it will then look for other projects to send you work from.

At this time, the best option for you is to disable that flag if you do not want to receive work from other projects when the events described above occur.

@ knreed & jhindo
Really helpful and informative post. Thank you.

I've made the point before that this kind of information is of value to the wider community rather than just being buried in a general 'problems' thread. I would hope that a mechanism is in place to tag this and similar posts Technical Issue and for them to be included in the weekly/monthly News Digest. Far more interesting and relevant than the Technical Issue Planned System Maintenance which formed my News Digest this week 2 days after it had been completed.

In this scenario one would expect to see the "there was work for your selected projects in memry, but all is commiited to other platforms" being logged before the "sending alternate work to fill the work request" Are they?

Since that rash of MCM1 units with the problems to report issue cropped up, I had a bunch of those units al end up with a "pending verification" status. Looking this morning it appears anything with that designation eventually has turned invalid. Whatever the cause, I hope the new version fixes it.
Cheers

The "No Reply" status simply means The unit has not been returned completed. This may happen for any number of reasons, such as a computer which died, or the participant deleted BOINC from their computer. It is one of the reasons another unit was issued to make the quorum of 2.
Cheers