OPNG workunits
Over the past 2 weeks many volunteers noticed the lack of OPNG workunits. The shortage is not a technical issue, but rather it has a “science-based” reason. Here is a short message the OPN team shared with us:

“The scientists are analyzing the available data to choose a set of protein conformations for the next rounds of molecular docking in GPUs. The focus is on PLPro, one of the SARS-CoV-2 proteases. The dockings will include covalent and non-covalent compounds.”

When new OPNG tasks will be prepared, we will make a small announcement informing everyone.

SSD delay
Unfortunately, the new storage upgrade that we mentioned in this previous update has been delayed by a late shipment of the SSDs, with no guaranteed ETA for implementation after arrival at this time. We are in constant communication with the SHARCNET team as to the status of the new drives, and will update you when significant progress has been made.

Missing devices in Contributions page
Several volunteers experienced missing devices and results in the Contributions page. This issue has been problematic for some time and we are now putting more effort into solving it. For the time being, we have scheduled a batch update from the BOINC database directly, bypassing the message passing via IBM MQ that notifies the website database when new devices have been inserted into the BOINC database. Insertion into the BOINC database occurs at time of first contact with our scheduler. The new record is then placed on a service-to-service queue, to which the webserver and website database server are subscribed. When processed, this message should result in visibility of the device in both databases and to users on the website immediately.

The fact that only some devices do not show up as a result of this process and remain “hidden” is what we must understand before we can fully resolve the issue. For now, re-running the batch update procedure regularly will help to recover visibility of most devices newly added to WCG. We highly encourage those having this issue to send an email to support@worldcommunitygrid.org with screenshots and extra details you can provide.

If you have any comments or questions, please leave them in this thread for us to answer. Thank you for your support, patience and understanding.

WCG team at Krembil Research Institute