A technique for managing process state information involves pushing process state information from the kernel space to the user space in the event of an application crash and generating a core file at the user level instead of at the kernel level. Handling the process state information at the user level instead of at the kernel level provides more flexibility in the generation and management of a core file as compared to systems that use kernel code to generate and manage the core file. A core dump application at the user level can be programmed to forward the core file to another system that has permanent storage capacity available. Additionally, the core dump application can be programmed to compress the process state information and/or to extract only certain information from the process state information while generating the core file.