diff --git a/kernel/gen_kheaders.sh b/kernel/gen_kheaders.sh
index 1ef9a87511f5..6d443ea22bb7 100755
--- a/kernel/gen_kheaders.sh
+++ b/kernel/gen_kheaders.sh
@@ -83,12 +83,9 @@ find $cpio_dir -type f -print0 |
 	xargs -0 -P8 -n1 perl -pi -e 'BEGIN {undef $/;}; s/\/\*((?!SPDX).)*?\*\///smg;'
 
 # Create archive and try to normalize metadata for reproducibility.
-# For compatibility with older versions of tar, files are fed to tar
-# pre-sorted, as --sort=name might not be available.
-find $cpio_dir -printf "./%P\n" | LC_ALL=C sort | \
-    tar "${KBUILD_BUILD_TIMESTAMP:+--mtime=$KBUILD_BUILD_TIMESTAMP}" \
-    --owner=0 --group=0 --numeric-owner --no-recursion \
-    -I $XZ -cf $tarfile -C $cpio_dir/ -T - > /dev/null
+tar "${KBUILD_BUILD_TIMESTAMP:+--mtime=$KBUILD_BUILD_TIMESTAMP}" \
+    --owner=0 --group=0 --sort=name --numeric-owner \
+    -I $XZ -cf $tarfile -C $cpio_dir/ . > /dev/null
 
 echo $headers_md5 > kernel/kheaders.md5
 echo "$this_file_md5" >> kernel/kheaders.md5