Abstract: Methods, systems, and apparatus can provide a means for a user-level process to acquire locks on resources at the kernel level through the use of a session that persists after the termination of the user-level process. A session recovery mechanism can be provided so that a newly started process can query an existing kernel-level lock session to discover which locks were held by a previously terminated process. This is accomplished, in part, through associating the kernel session with a token, rather than by associating the locks with a user-level process ID. Such a mechanism provides the ability for the new process to perform appropriate lock cleanup or to continue the work of the previous process under protection of the surviving locks.