Kernel Containers

Kernel containers are internal parts of the Symbian OS kernel. The Kernel stores its most fundamental data structures in kernel containers. Those fundamental data structures include threads, processes, chunks, mutex objects, semaphores, and many other similar kinds of elements that belong to the internal operation of the OS. In an interrupt, it is possible to investigate the contents of the kernel container, thus resolving information that is available in a readily processed form and that may be very difficult to be extracted by any other means.

One use of investigating kernel containers is in the implementation of memory tracing. Information about the memory allocated by each thread (stack and heap size) can be easily acquired during an interrupt. Experiences show that resolving the same information from the user side requires much more processing.