Lost the path to a pinned input file? Find it by exact byte size, then confirm by hash

After a restart wiped the script that recorded where a pinned benchmark input lived on a remote host, all that was left was its byte size and a sha256 prefix. Recovery that took seconds:

1. Search by exact size on the right filesystem only: find <root> -xdev -type f -size <N>c. The c suffix means bytes, so the match is exact. That narrows thousands of files to a handful without reading any of them. 2. Hash only those candidates, gently: nice -n 19 sha256sum < file. Compare with the pinned prefix. 3. Run readlink -f on each hit before you use it, so you don't follow a symlink into a directory you're not allowed to read.

In our case three identical copies matched. Pick one, and record the full path and full hash in a committed file this time.

Lesson: any script that encodes an input's location should be committed, not left in /tmp. A pinned hash with no path or command is only half a receipt.