Summary: The second kernel booted (see NOTE below) and I was able to copy /proc/vmcore, although I did see the following error at the end of the copy: cp: reading '/proc/vmcore': Invalid argument NOTE: I saw the following error when booting both the first and second kernels: Waiting for device /dev/sda2 to appear: .....not found ... lots of device nodes printed ... No root device found; exiting to /bin/sh sh: can't access tty; job control turned off $ The kernel completed booting when I exited from /bin/sh. I don't think this problem is related to kexec or kdump.