How do I remove a kernel from Fedora for good?

Question

I am running Fedora 32 and I want to remove the new 5.7 kernel since it is causing some problems.

I have tried:

sudo dnf remove kernel-*5.7.10-201.fc32.x86_64

And it did remove something but the kernel is still there in the GRUB menu and is strangely fully bootable.

How do I remove it for good ? I want it gone from the GRUB menu and completely from my system.

Running the command:

dnf list installed kernel-* | grep -i 5.7

proves the kernel 5.7 is still present:

kernel-core.x86_64 5.7.10-201.fc32
kernel-devel.x86_64 5.7.10-201.fc32
kernel-headers.x86_64 5.7.10-200.fc32
kernel-modules.x86_64 5.7.10-201.fc32
kernel-modules-extra.x86_64 5.7.10-201.fc32

How do I remove these and how do I get rid of it from GRUB ?

Note: Running something like:

sudo dnf remove kernel-core.x86_64 5.7.10-201.fc32
sudo dnf remove kernel-core.x86_64.5.7.10-201.fc32
sudo dnf remove kernel-core.5.7.10-201.fc32.x86_64

All give errors.

The errors are as follows:

$ sudo dnf remove kernel-core.x86_64 5.7.10-201.fc32
No match for argument: 5.7.10-201.fc32
Error: 
 Problem: The operation would result in removing the following protected packages: kernel-core
(try to add '--skip-broken' to skip uninstallable packages)


$ sudo dnf remove kernel-core.x86_64.5.7.10-201.fc32
No match for argument: kernel-core.x86_64.5.7.10-201.fc32
No packages marked for removal.
Dependencies resolved.
Nothing to do.
Complete!


$ sudo dnf remove kernel-core.5.7.10-201.fc32.x86_64
No match for argument: kernel-core.5.7.10-201.fc32.x86_64
No packages marked for removal.
Dependencies resolved.
Nothing to do.
Complete!

Solution

It seems DNF does not give the full name of the package that would be needed by dnf remove to remove the kernel.

For that it is better to use rpm.

This is the command that worked for me:

sudo dnf remove $(rpm -qa | grep ^kernel | grep 5\.7)

Comments

[schaiba]

are you 100% sure that version is not the one currently running? what does uname -r say?

[ng.newbie]

@schaiba It says : 5.7.10-201.fc32.x86_64

[ng.newbie]

@schaiba That is I can boot into the kernel after it has been removed. Which is to say is weird.

[ng.newbie]

@rickhg12hs yes. I had to use rpm to get the full name.