A further thought on this. I think kgdb should take control on oops, panic and other bad news things. This without being anthing but configured in. Thus the command line options to set up the interface, etc, should not automatically connect to gdb.
FWIW, this is true of KGDB on all PPCs. IIRC, so long as the serial
definitions are filled out statically, the stub currently in kernel.org
for PPC can do first-line-of-C already.
How about changing the code in kgdbstub to allow kgdb to be configured in one of the following ways:
Late kgdb - kgdb comes up after smp_init in the kernel boot sequence. kgdb8250 can be used with more flexibility through kernel command line options. One can boot a kgdb kernel without activating kgdb. Works with the interface chosen by kernel command line (kgdb8250 and kgdbeth for the moment).
Which is basically how it goes now, right?
Early kgdb - kgdb comes up right at the begining of start_kernel at the cost of flexibility. It doesn't show any messages such as "waiting for gdb".