Kernel image too big

Support
1

I have upgraded CentOS 7 to Alma 8, then to Alma 9. Most VMs are fine, but few VMs has big kernel images. The output of lsinitrd shows:

Image: /boot/initramfs-5.14.0-427.37.1.el9_4.x86_64.img: 103M

Early CPIO image

drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 0 Oct 1 12:37 .
-rw-r–r-- 1 root root 2 Oct 1 12:37 early_cpio
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 0 Oct 1 12:37 kernel
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 0 Oct 1 12:37 kernel/x86
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 0 Oct 1 12:37 kernel/x86/microcode
-rw-r–r-- 1 root root 76166 Oct 1 12:37 kernel/x86/microcode/AuthenticAMD.bin
-rw-r–r-- 1 root root 14086144 Oct 1 12:37 kernel/x86/microcode/GenuineIntel.bin

Most VMs only contains AMD bin. But few of them have both Intel and AMD bin files. How can I remove Intel bin from the kernel images as a default?

2

I compared /boot/config-5.14.0-427.37.1.el9_4.x86_64 between good VM and bad VM, they are the same???

3

The config does not dictate what is in the initramfs. The dracut adds files to the image based on what is “needed/used” by the system. (The selection is not always perfect though.)