When kdump on an Oracle VM Server is configured to use sparse files for vmcore dump files to reduce the dump file size, kdump fails with an error similar to:

Scanning and configuring dmraid supported devices 
...
cp: unrecognized option `--sparse=always' 
...

Workaround: Add the following to the kdump.conf on the Oracle VM Server:

extra_bins /bin/cp
core_collector /bin/cp --sparse=always

Bug 15959684, 17943175