-- in /var/cpanel/users/

[bofla]

Strange thing,
[/var/cpanel/users]# ls -al |more
total 4180
-rw-r--r-- 1 cpanel root 92 Apr 7 2005 --
drwx--x--x 2 cpanel root 20480 Oct 12 12:37 ./
drwx--x--x 35 root root 4096 Oct 12 12:44 ../
-rw-r----- 1 cpanel a1home2i 222 Jul 13 15:55 a1home2i
-rw-r----- 1 cpanel a1recru 208 Jul 13 15:51 a1recru
-rw-r----- 1 cpanel a23engi 214 Oct 10 10:11 a23engi
-rw-r----- 1 cpanel abacus 126 Sep 29 12:17 abacus

etc...

notice the first listing "--". I've never seen anything like this and it's acting quite strange.
pico \-\- creates the file, cat \-\- is acting very very strange:
[/var/cpanel/users]# cat \-\-
a [enter]
a
c [enter]
c
ctrl c

--edit--
my collegue that found about this tried to pico and saving it and that's why now it has inode and Oct 12. He says that the inode was not there when he checked. Also 'cat' is still producing that weird thing.
--/edit--
on inode listing says:
738760 -rw-r--r-- 1 cpanel root 16 Oct 12 12:49 --

(notice the date change !!)
and same ls -la:
-rw-r--r-- 1 cpanel root 16 Oct 12 12:49 --


very very strange. Any ideas ?

[chirpy]

Unless it was created accidentally, it's most likely file system corruption. You should probably reboot and force an FSCK to check the integrity of the disk. Make sure that you have good backups.