Time to deprecate crash dump support in stats tools (or KVM-grovelers in general)?

[Jason Thorpe <thorpej%shagadelic.org@localhost>]

NetBSD has taken great steps recently to modernize its kernel.  One of  
those steps has been to use per-CPU data for various subsystems (and  
the list of subsystems employing this technique to gain MP scalability  
is increasing).

One of the upshots of moving to per-CPU data is that the data must be  
collated in order to be reported.  This works well on live systems  
where sysctl is available.  It doesn't work so well on crash dumps;  
the tools then have to know the specifics of how per-CPU data is  
managed for that particular subsystem and collate the data themselves.

Given this, I think it's time to deprecate crash dump support in these  
tools (e.g. netstat(1)), and, more generally, deprecate KVM-groveling  
except in some very specific circumstances.

Comments?

-- thorpej