health

health is the check-engine light for an ECU file. You give it one binary and it runs six safety checks in a single pass, then gives you a simple verdict: healthy, or issues found.

Think of it as taking the file for an MOT test before you trust it. It does not change the file — it only reads it and reports.

When do I need it?

Before you cook or tune a file. If the file has problems (wiped areas, broken checksums, duplicate VINs), you want to know before you build a recipe on top of it.
When a file looks suspicious. identify said SUSPICIOUS? Run health to see exactly what is wrong.
In scripts and CI. health exits with a clear code: 0 when the file is healthy, 1 when something failed — so a build or a batch job can stop automatically on a bad file.

Try it (2 minutes)

openremap health my-file.bin

You will see a header line with the file name, its size, the ECU family (if known) and the overall verdict — HEALTHY or ISSUES FOUND — followed by one line per check, each marked ok, warn, fail or skip:

  my-file.bin  •  2,097,152 bytes  •  EDC17  •  HEALTHY

  IDENTITY      OK    ...
  CHECKSUMS     OK    ...
  AXIS SANITY   ...
  MAP COUNT     ...
  ERASED BLOCKS ...
  VIN DUPLICATE ...

(Output shortened — the exact lines and their ok/warn/fail results depend on your file.)

Understanding the answer

Check	In plain words
Identity	Is the ECU family recognised, with a believable software version?
Checksums	Are the file's built-in "fingerprints" (checksums) still valid? A checksum is a small stored value that proves a block of data was not corrupted or edited
Axis sanity	Do the tuning tables' axes (RPM, load…) contain believable values, not garbage?
Map count	Is the number of tables found roughly what this ECU family normally has? Too few = wiped calibration; way too many = scanner noise
Erased blocks	Are there large erased/empty areas inside the data where they should not be?
VINs	Are there duplicate car ID numbers (VINs) in one file — a sign of a cloned or merged dump?

A file is healthy only when no check fails. A warn (yellow) is "look at this, but it is not necessarily a problem" — some ECUs legitimately warn on erased regions or checksums. A fail (red) is a real concern.

Note

health checks, it does not fix. A file that fails the checksum check still needs its checksums corrected by your flashing/checksum tool after any modification — see the checksum page.

For developers

The same six-check pass is one method of openremap.api, available from code or over JSON-RPC — same checks, same result:

Way of using it	Where to look	Example
Terminal (CLI)	health — CLI	`openremap health my-file.bin`
Python code	health — API	`api.call("health", {"path": "my-file.bin"})`
Any language (JSON-RPC)	health — API	a request with `"method": "health"`

Where to go next

You want to…	Go to
See every option and all the checks in detail	health — CLI
Call `health` from your own code	health — API
First identify the file, then health-check it	`identify`
Understand what checksums are and how to fix them	`checksum`
Check the whole pipeline end to end	How it works