Provided are a method, system, and article of manufacture for gathering state information for an application and kernel components called by the application. An implementation of a component to execute in a kernel space is instantiated in a user space. An application invokes a call to the component in the kernel space. The call to the component in the kernel space is invoked and an implementation of the component in the user space is invoked to execute the call in the user space. State information related to the execution of the call to the component in the user space to include in checkpoint information for the application is gathered.