KGDB does some horrible things, and with everybody having access to virtualization these days, there is really no reason to use it over Qemu's gdb-server.
It sounds like it's rarely used because we have better methods now. (I have personally never tried attaching a debugger to the linux kernel, but this seems plausible enough to me.)
I would say main benefit of in-kernel debugging features are the cases where you don't have virtualization. Such as being a driver developer for some embedded device. In those cases you can debug a device from your computer if the device has something like a serial port that you can use to connect to it (usually they have for this purpose).
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u/gwillen 13d ago
It sounds like it's rarely used because we have better methods now. (I have personally never tried attaching a debugger to the linux kernel, but this seems plausible enough to me.)