The size of the initramfs of an AMI image created with Image Builder is considerably bigger than a kickstarted AMI image.

Kickstart:

4.1M    ./usr/lib/modules
4.1M    ./usr/lib/modules/4.18.0-553.52.1.el8_10.x86_64
4.5M    ./usr/lib/kbd
5.5M    ./usr/lib/systemd
6.3M    ./usr/bin
9.6M    ./usr/sbin
17M     ./usr/lib
40M     ./usr/lib64
73M     ./usr
74M     . 

Image Builder:

23M     ./usr/lib/modules
23M     ./usr/lib/modules/4.18.0-553.92.1.el8_10.x86_64
35M     ./usr/lib/firmware/netronome
35M     ./usr/lib/firmware/netronome/nic
44M     ./usr/lib64
58M     ./usr/lib/firmware/amdgpu
129M    ./usr/lib/firmware
161M    ./usr/lib
225M    ./usr
245M    . 

The main difference seems to be the inclusion of "/usr/lib/firmware", which shouldn't be necessary in virtualized environments.

What is the impact of this issue to you?

Customer reports a high financial impact because it increases the cost of running their infrastructure in AWS.

Please provide the package NVR for which the bug is seen:

osbuild-158-1.el9.noarch

How reproducible is this bug?:

Always

Steps to reproduce

1. Compose a RHEL image selecting "AMI" as the image type.
2. Upload the .raw image to S3 and convert it to AMI.
3. Check the content of the initramfs.