Systems and methods of managing primitives are disclosed. A data structure that is stored in user space is registered, wherein the data structure tracks a user controllable mutual exclusion primitive that is acquired by a process running in the user space, and wherein the user controllable mutual exclusion primitive serves as a lock on a resource provided by a computer system. A termination of the process is detected, wherein the process maintains the lock on the resource after termination and the data structure is searched to identify the user controllable mutual exclusion primitive that is acquired by the process that terminated. The user controllable mutual exclusion primitive is released if the user controllable mutual exclusion primitive is identified as being acquired by the process.