info on kernel module debugging

I need to be able to step through some of our kernel module code at the assembly level, but it doesn't appear that I can do this while running on a "real" IA64 box.
I am fairly sure that the problem I am encountering is not a bug in our code (yeah ... trust me), but I can't isolate the root cause right now because the machine just plain old freezes on me.

Answers to the following questions would help though:

1) I've tried using kdb to set breakpoints at kernel module functions that were exported and this doesn't seem to work. I end up getting a kernel oops and complaint about being unable to handle the paging request. It appears to be stopping/panicking right before I want it to, though, and kdb was willing to set a bp there. :) Should I be able to do this or not?
I see that kdb works fine when I set up break points for functions in the kernel itself. (I'm currently using turbolinux test8 kernel).

2) Is there any sort of approx. timeline for when the remote kernel debugger
will be available for IA64 (kgdb)?

3) Does the magic system request key work on this platform? I've tried it out with
no luck and my autoconf file indicates CONFIG_MAGIC_SYSRQ is enabled. Something else I need to be doing here?

Thanks for any pointers,

--Rob