diff --git a/kernel/gen_kheaders.sh b/kernel/gen_kheaders.sh
index aff79e461fc9..5a0fc0b0403a 100755
--- a/kernel/gen_kheaders.sh
+++ b/kernel/gen_kheaders.sh
@@ -71,10 +71,13 @@ done | cpio --quiet -pd $cpio_dir >/dev/null 2>&1
 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
-tar "${KBUILD_BUILD_TIMESTAMP:+--mtime=$KBUILD_BUILD_TIMESTAMP}" \
-    --owner=0 --group=0 --sort=name --numeric-owner \
-    -Jcf $tarfile -C $cpio_dir/ . > /dev/null
+# 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 \
+    -Jcf $tarfile -C $cpio_dir/ -T - > /dev/null
 
 echo "$src_files_md5" >  kernel/kheaders.md5
 echo "$obj_files_md5" >> kernel/kheaders.md5