Failed to start apache Can't open /etc/apache2/envvars

Question

i have had this problem a couple of times now and i am not sure what is causing it

Failed to start apache : .: 45: Can't open /etc/apache2/envvars

when i look at a dir listing, i get these question marks next to envvars, does anyone know what that means?

os is ubuntu 10 if that helps

 drwxr-xr-x  7 root root 4096 Jan 29 11:56 .
drwxr-xr-x 83 root root 4096 Feb  4 10:34 ..
-rw-r--r--  1 root root 8113 Sep 29 01:52 apache2.conf
-rw-r--r--  1 root root 8027 Oct  3 22:26 apache2.conf.dpkg-old
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root 4096 Jan 29 11:56 conf.d
??????????  ? ?    ?       ?            ? envvars
-rw-r--r--  1 root root    0 Oct  3 22:25 httpd.conf
??????????  ? ?    ?       ?            ? magic
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root 4096 Jan 29 11:56 mods-available
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root 4096 Jan 29 10:18 mods-enabled
??????????  ? ?    ?       ?            ? ports.conf
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root 4096 Jan 29 11:56 sites-available
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root 4096 Jan 29 11:55 sites-enabled

UPDATE Just heard back from the hosting company, they move my VPS to a new hardware node last night, and something at their end wasn't quite right which caused the issue

Answer 1

The only time I've seen the question marks on a directory listing is when there are issues with the disk. You might want to try unmounting the partition if possible or loading a Live Linux Distro and run fsck -f

Answer 2

UPDATE Just heard back from the hosting company, they move my VPS to a new hardware node last night, and something at their end wasn't quite right which caused the issue