Boot without uImage

[Ulrich]

Everything works, but I don't know why (;-)

I upgraded to a new kernel 6.12.34-current-meson64 and also to the current u-boot. If I take a look at a current armbian image, every image.. vmlinux.. etc. is available in the boot folder, but no uImage. In my boot folder, however, in addition to the these  files in the current armbian image, in my boot folder is still is a uImage from 2022.

uname -r -> 6.12.34-current-meson6 So the current kernel is loaded and everything works. But if I now delete the uImage from 2022, the computer no longer boots. How does a current armbian image manage to boot without uImage? Is a uImage created at the first start?

Manually I have created a new uImage via mkimage -A arm -O linux -T kernel -C none -a 0x01080000 -e 0x01080000 -n "Linux" -d ./vmlinuz-* ./uImage and the computer boots again, without uImage and only with the vmlinuz files not. 

Long story - can I leave it like that, or is there a way to boot without uImage.

[Ulrich]

Problem solved... My ignorance... For inexplicable reasons, u-boot was updated without an error message, but actually NOT written to the SD card. The ancient version apparently cannot start without uImage. Now I have manually written the SD card - more precisely an image of it - with the new u-boot and then wrote a new SD card from that image, uImage can be deleted and it runs...

[SteeMan]

3 hours ago, Ulrich said:

For inexplicable reasons

That is the expected behavior.  You always need to "install" u-boot after a new version from apt.  The apt package just provides the binaries that you can install.