Patent ID: 8473565

Claim:
A non-transitory computer program product for converting data associated with a symbol accessible via a special file for different versions of an operating system, the non-transitory computer program product comprising: a non-transitory computer readable storage medium having computer readable program code embodied therewith, the computer readable program code comprising: computer readable program code configured to, access the data associated with the symbol in response to a request to access the symbol via the special file, wherein the special file is for accessing kernel memory directly, wherein an application of a first of a plurality of instances of the operating system requests the access to the symbol, wherein the symbol is accessible via a second of the plurality of instances of the operating system, wherein the second of the plurality of instances of the operating system manages the plurality of instances, wherein the plurality of instances of the operating system share a kernel, wherein the first of the plurality of the instances of the operating system is a first version of the operating system, wherein the second of the plurality of instances of the operating system is a second version of the operating system, and wherein the data is in a first data format that is compatible with the second version of the operating system determine that the first data format for the data is incompatible with the first version of the operating system, convert the data from the first data format to a second data format that is compatible with the first version of the operating system, and return the data in the second data format in response to the request to access the symbol.