My User folder was eaten by a platypus

I presume that what you mean is that there is a copy of your home folder under /Volumes/hexley - but that your actual home folder is still in its usual place under /Users

I have no idea how that "hexley" folder would get created.
Maybe you want to tell us more details about just what sort of ssh connections you were doing?

Note that if you think that your system has been compromised, then there is no alternative to making a backup of the files you care about and then erasing the disk completely and then reinstalling OS X from the Apple Install CD/DVD.

But unless you have more indications that your system has been taken over, I wouldn't jump to that conclusion.

The first thing to do is to restart your Mac and see if that hexley folder is still there. If it is, then please show us the results of the following commands (in a Terminal window):

id
ls -l /Volumes
df -h


And you might want to read this Unix FAQ (http://forums.macosxhints.com/showthread.php?t=40648)

Irrelevant side note: this has to be the thread with the best title in the history of these forums. :D

Thank you for your interest in my marsupial problem. It turns out that the sinister-seeming hexley was just some sort of old mount point artifact. I was able to finally just trash it in the Finder. This was, however, a good lesson in the dangers of Terminal ignorance and paranoia. But it still doesn't explain why the unofficial Darwin mascot chose to nest in my computer in the first place.

Interesting thread. It made me check something and here is what I got:

monkey:~ eric$ ls -al /Volumes/
total 122896
drwxrwxrwt 6 root admin 204 Feb 23 01:11 .
drwxrwxr-t 34 root admin 1258 Feb 23 01:01 ..
-rw-rw-rw- 1 eric admin 6148 Oct 27 18:07 .DS_Store
-rwxrwxrwx 1 eric eric 82 Oct 27 17:51 ._SUSAN'S IPO
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root admin 1 Feb 23 01:02 Basement -> /
-rw-r--r-- 1 eric admin 62906283 Jan 20 20:54 Cabinet.tgz


I know what each of the things are.

Susan's iPod hasn't been plugged into my computer for weeks and is still there after a good 4 or 5 restarts.

Cabinet.tgz was plugged into my computer this evening - but as a full volume, not compressed, so what's the deal with that? If it was actually there and that size on my HD it would exceed the amount of space I have.

I'm not as concerned about why they are there as I am as interested as to why they are. As a paranoid person who has had my laptop stolen I try to keep as little sensitive data as possible on the machine but if it is still remembering these things after multiple restarts - what else is the computer remembering? I have spotlight shut off for the plug in volumes - so why is it still remembering what is there?

Clues, articles, info would be greatly appreciated.

-rwxrwxrwx 1 eric eric 82 Oct 27 17:51 ._SUSAN'S IPO
-rw-r--r-- 1 eric admin 62906283 Jan 20 20:54 Cabinet.tgz
Susan's iPod hasn't been plugged into my computer for weeks and is still there after a good 4 or 5 restarts.
Cabinet.tgz was plugged into my computer this evening - but as a full volume, not compressed, so what's the deal with that?
Is it possible there was a crash while any of those were connected?
Or perhaps either was unplugged/disconnected before choosing Eject?
The compressed item... is there some backup software associated with it?

-HI-

Yeah - these look like detritus left over from volumes improperly unmounted.

I recently learned how bad it is to unmount a volume imporperly. (Accidentally unpluged my external HD doing back up with CCC) It made an invisible back up volume of almost 15GB and I only had like 15.something GB left on my drive.

It was scary when my computer told me I had no space left.