> unlike FreeBSD, NetBSD requires the kernel be compiled
> with USE_KGDB to use remote gdb. so, I could end up
> looking at a machine that was not pre-compiled for
> that and have to extract max info from that scenario.
> how stable is the #ifdef KGDB code wrt DDB btw?
> thanks

FYI,

All GDB needs is a connection to the target that provides a mechanism 
for obtaining register and memory values.  That mechanism can be a rom 
monitor, a remote debug agent (kgdb), a jtag probe, or even another 
debugger.  ddb is sufficient for this task.  The missing piece is a 
remote-nbsd.c module (in GDB) that lets GDB talk ``ddb''.

While kgdb is certainly more reliable than something parsing ddb output, 
ddb (as you note :-) is sometimes all you have.

enjoy,
Andrew