A computer system having a kernel interface that provides a technique for creating memory descriptors that provides a single way of representing memory objects and provides a common interface to operations upon those objects. The present invention allow programmers to create a kernel interface that provides a mechanism to achieve a cohesive de-coupled interface between file-systems and virtual memory in a distributed computer system. The present invention allows the kernel interface to be provided as four sub-components with a primary abstraction mechanism and three supporting mechanisms. The primary abstraction is a memory descriptor that presents a common interface to manifold memory objects. The set of supported objects is complete in that the file-system need not deal with any other representation of memory.