Can I combine the two to debug memory errors on a remote machine?
Yes: current vgdb accepts --port=
argument since this commit:
r12204 | sewardj | 2011-10-22 13:38:08 -0700 (Sat, 22 Oct 2011) | 5 lines
So run vgdb --port=2345
, and then (gdb) target remote host:2345
as usual.