According to comments by @lurker vmlinuz is compressed and can be uncompressed using the command below (from Extract vmlinux from vmlinuz or bzImage )
$ sudo dd if=vmlinuz-3.2.0-23-generic-pae skip=`grep -a -b -o -m 1 -P '\x1f\x8b\x08\x00' vmlinuz-3.2.0-23-generic-pae| cut -d: -f 1` bs=1 | zcat > /tmp/vmlinux 4998324+0 records in 4998324+0 records out 4998324 bytes (5.0 MB) copied, 201.859 s, 24.8 kB/s gzip: stdin: decompression OK, trailing garbage ignored
Now for the error
crash: /var/crash/_usr_sbin_ietd.0.crash: unsupported file format
we also need to extract the kernel dump file from the crash report using apport-unpack as shown below ( from here )
@ubuntu:/tmp$ sudo apport-unpack Usage: /usr/bin/apport-unpack <report> <target directory> @ubuntu:/tmp$ sudo apport-unpack /var/crash/_usr_sbin_ietd.0.crash /var/crash/ ERROR: Destination directory exists and is not empty. @ubuntu:/tmp$ @ubuntu:/tmp$ sudo mkdir coretest @ubuntu:/tmp$ sudo apport-unpack /var/crash/_usr_sbin_ietd.0.crash /tmp/coretest/ @ubuntu:/tmp$ cd coretest/ @ubuntu:/tmp/coretest$ @ubuntu:/tmp/coretest$ ls Architecture Date ExecutablePath ProblemType ProcCwd ProcMaps Signal UserGroups CoreDump DistroRelease ExecutableTimestamp ProcCmdline ProcEnviron ProcStatus Uname @ubuntu:/tmp/coretest$ ls -lt total 384 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4 May 29 00:13 Architecture -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 24 May 29 00:13 Date -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 12 May 29 00:13 DistroRelease -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 10 May 29 00:13 ExecutableTimestamp -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 339968 May 29 00:13 CoreDump -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 5 May 29 00:13 ProblemType -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 66 May 29 00:13 ProcEnviron -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 969 May 29 00:13 ProcMaps -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 737 May 29 00:13 ProcStatus -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2 May 29 00:13 Signal -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 31 May 29 00:13 Uname -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 14 May 29 00:13 ExecutablePath -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 14 May 29 00:13 ProcCmdline -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1 May 29 00:13 ProcCwd -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 May 29 00:13 UserGroups @ubuntu:/tmp/coretest$ cd CoreDump bash: cd: CoreDump: Not a directory @ubuntu:/tmp/coretest$ sudo crash /tmp/vmlinux /boot/System.map-3.2.0-23-generic-pae /tmp/coretest/CoreDump crash 6.1.6 Copyright (C) 2002-2013 Red Hat, Inc. Copyright (C) 2004, 2005, 2006, 2010 IBM Corporation Copyright (C) 1999-2006 Hewlett-Packard Co Copyright (C) 2005, 2006, 2011, 2012 Fujitsu Limited Copyright (C) 2006, 2007 VA Linux Systems Japan KK Copyright (C) 2005, 2011 NEC Corporation Copyright (C) 1999, 2002, 2007 Silicon Graphics, Inc. Copyright (C) 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002 Mission Critical Linux, Inc. This program is free software, covered by the GNU General Public License, and you are welcome to change it and/or distribute copies of it under certain conditions. Enter "help copying" to see the conditions. This program has absolutely no warranty. Enter "help warranty" for details. GNU gdb (GDB) 7.3.1 Copyright (C) 2011 Free Software Foundation, Inc. License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html> This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it. There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law. Type "show copying" and "show warranty" for details. This GDB was configured as "i686-pc-linux-gnu"... crash: /tmp/vmlinux: no debugging data available @ubuntu:/tmp/coretest$
For "No debugging data available," you need the debuginfo packages (program_name-dbg or progname-dbgsym) installed by this link and this is one
The steps for downloading debuginfo packages for the kernel are mentioned in the question https://askubuntu.com/questions/197016/how-to-install-a-package-that-contains-ubuntu-kernel-debug-symbols
However, the step of adding a GPG key (as shown below) is critical for the boot to work.
sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys ECDCAD72428D7C01
You should receive a message like
public key "Ubuntu Debug Symbol Archive Auto Signature Key" imported
not the status of "not changed." If “unchanged” is written in this step, you will not be able to download the debuginfo package.
In this case, try importing the GPG key using the http 80 as port ( here )
sudo apt-key adv --keyserver hkp://keyserver.ubuntu.com:80 --recv 7F0CEB10