Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!uvm-gen!banzai!jay
From: jay@banzai.UUCP (Jay Schuster)
Newsgroups: news.sysadmin
Subject: Re: question on bad newsgroups
Summary: A Bug in your report.awk script
Message-ID: <1154@banzai.UUCP>
Date: 30 May 89 19:54:11 GMT
References: <185@icdi10.uucp> <804@ivucsb.sba.ca.us> <137@swituc.UUCP>
Reply-To: jay@banzai.UUCP (Jay Schuster)
Distribution: na
Organization: People's Computer Company, Williston, VT
Lines: 28

In article <137@swituc.UUCP> pmb@swituc.UUCP (Pat Berry) writes:
>In article <804@ivucsb.sba.ca.us>, news@ivucsb.sba.ca.us (Todd Day) writes:
>> ~Bad Newsgroups Received
>> ~a.politic 18               This is the stuff I'm talking about.
   ba.politics
>> ~a.single 1
   ba.singles
>> ~alk.politics.gun 5
   talk.politics.guns
>> ~lt.bb 1
   alt.bbs
>> ~lt.conspirac 1
   alt.conspiracy
>We are getting the same thing to the tune of 10 to 15 per day.  It appears
>to be a handshaking problem, clipping off the first few chars of the group
>names.

It's due to a bug in your report.awk script that you use to generate that
report.  It processes the lines and drops the first and last characters of
the newsgroup name.  The script comes from Eric E. Fair.  It was reported
as having this bug a year or two ago and there was a fix at that time.

Now, as to why you even get those messages:  If something is crossposted
to a group you do get and a group you don't get, you get one of those
messages for the groups you don't get.
-- 
Jay Schuster			uunet!uvm-gen!banzai!jay, attmail!banzai!jay
The People's Computer Company	`Revolutionary Programming'