Secondary Kernel Presence in /boot After Aria Suite Lifecycle 8.18 Patch 9 - Aria Suite Lifecycle

Products

• VCF Operations

Issue/Introduction

Following the application of Aria Suite Lifecycle 8.18 Patch 9 (Build 25621957), a secondary generic kernel may be observed in the /boot partition. This article clarifies that this is expected behavior and does not indicate a system fault or an incomplete patch installation.

Environment

Aria Suite Lifecycle 8.18 Patch 9 - Aria Suite Lifecycle

Cause

After Patch 9, the /boot partition may show usage >70%. Inspecting /boot reveals two kernels: the active ESX kernel (e.g., linux-6.1.176-3.ph5-esx) and a generic kernel package (e.g., linux-6.1.176-4.ph5.x86_64).

Resolution

• Resolution: This behavior is expected. The appliance continues to boot from the ESX kernel as configured in /boot/photon.cfg. No action is required, and manual removal of the generic kernel package via tdnf remove is not supported and may lead to system instability.