ddb and dump devices

[Garrett Cooper]

Hi again Hackers,
    Another question that popped up recently in my mind given some of
the stability issues with RAID controllers is: what happens when you
can't dump to a RAID or non-RAIDed PATA/SATA device? In particular,
does it make sense to have the functionality where one could make the
dump/panic operation fault resistant where the person could get a
`freebie' and use an alternate device, like USB thumbdrives,
tapedrives (not saying that'd be smart), or a network device to dump
the data? I realize that not all cases are recoverable and there will
be some coverage gaps still, but it'd be nice if we could fill in the
gaps that do exist when stuff goes horribly south.
    This functionality would be helpful for my company at least
(Ironport) as disk RAIDs sometimes fail and we don't have a means of
writing back data, and we don't always have serial connectivity on our
appliances and our customers typically don't in the field, s.t. we can
use kgdb on the machine and get more useful tracebacks from panic
conditions.
    Please let me know what you think and whether or not this is a
worthwhile endeavor.
Thanks!
-Garrett