February 2026
M T W T F S S
 1
2345678
9101112131415
16171819202122
232425262728  

Categories

February 2026
M T W T F S S
 1
2345678
9101112131415
16171819202122
232425262728  

Remove Old Kernels on RHEL, CentOS, Fedora

Remove Old Kernels on RHEL, CentOS, Fedora
This is quick guide howto delete/remove/clean old kernels on Fedora, CentOS, Red Hat (RHEL). I use here two kernel as example, if you want to keep other more or less, then adjust amount of installed kernels as you wish. Normally reason why you maybe want remove kernels is limited disk space, example on VPS servers and laptop. This is very easy task, you need yum-utils package.
1. Check Installed Kernels
Shell

rpm -q kernel
kernel-2.6.32-279.el6.x86_64
kernel-2.6.32-279.2.1.el6.x86_64
kernel-2.6.32-279.5.2.el6.x86_64
kernel-2.6.32-279.9.1.el6.x86_64

rpm -q kernel
kernel-2.6.32-279.el6.x86_64
kernel-2.6.32-279.2.1.el6.x86_64
kernel-2.6.32-279.5.2.el6.x86_64
kernel-2.6.32-279.9.1.el6.x86_64

2. Delete / Remove Old Kernels
Shell

## Install yum utils ##
yum install yum-utils

## Package-cleanup set count as how many old kernels you want left ##
package-cleanup –oldkernels –count=2

## Install yum utils ##
yum install yum-utils

## Package-cleanup set count as how many old kernels you want left ##
package-cleanup –oldkernels –count=2

3. Make Amount of Installed Kernels Permanent
Edit /etc/yum.conf and set installonly_limit:
Shell

installonly_limit=2

installonly_limit=2

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