IT105

Operating Systems

Process Management: Deadlocks

Harris Chikunya

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 Objectives
• By the end of this unit, you should be able to:
 Define a deadlocks;
 Discuss four conditions for a deadlock;
 Explain the ways of avoiding deadlocks; and
 Describe two ways to recover from the deadlock situation.

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 Resources
• There are two types of resources namely: Pre-emptable and Non-
pre-emptable Resources.
a) Pre-emptable Resources
• This resource can be taken away from the process with no ill effects.
Memory is an example of a pre-emptable resource.
b) Non-preemptable Resource
• This resource cannot be taken away from the process (without causing ill
effect). For example, CD resources are not pre-emptable at any arbitrary
moment.
• Under normal mode of operation, a process may utilize a resource in
only the following sequence:
 Request: If the request cannot be granted immediately, then the
requesting process must wait until it can acquire the resource.
 Use: The process can operate on the resource.
 Release: The process releases the resource.
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 Deadlocks
• A process requests resources; if the resources are not available at
that time, the process enters a wait state.
• It may happen that waiting processes will never again change state,
because the resources they have requested are held by other
waiting processes.
• This situation is called a deadlock.

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 Characterisation of a Deadlock
1. Mutual Exclusion condition
2. Hold and Wait condition
3. No Preemption
4. Circular Wait

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 Mutual Exclusion Condition
• The resources involved are non-shareable.
• At least one resource must be held in a non-shareable mode, that is,
only one process at a time claims exclusive control of the resource.
• If another process requests that resource, the requesting must be
delayed until the resource has been released.

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 Hold and Wait Condition
• In this condition, a requesting process already holds resources and
waiting for the requested resources.
• There must exist a process that is holding a resource already allocated
to it while waiting for additional resource that are currently being
held by other processes.

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 No-Preemption Condition
• Resources already allocated to a process cannot be preempted.
• Resources cannot be removed forcibly from the processes.
• After completion, they will be released voluntarily by the process
holding it.

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 Circular Wait Condition
• The processes in the system form a circular list or chain where each
process in the list is waiting for a resource held by the next process
in the list.
• There exists a set {P0, P1, …, P0} of waiting processes such that P0 is
waiting for a resource that is held by P1, P1 is waiting for a resource
that is held by P2, …, Pn–1 is waiting for a resource that is held by
Pn, and P0 is waiting for a resource that is held by P0.

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Deadlock Example

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 Resource allocation Graph
• This graph consists of a set of vertices V and a set of edges E.
• The set of vertices V is partitioned into two different types of nodes P = {PI,
P2, ..., Pn}, the set consisting of all the active processes in the system, and
R = {R1, R2, ..., Rm}, the set consisting of all resource types in the system.

• A directed edge from process Pi to resource type Rj is denoted by PiRj; it signifies

that process Pi requested an instance of resource type Rj and is currently waiting
for that resource.
• A directed edge from resource type Rj to process Pi is denoted by RjPi; it signifies
that an instance of resource type Rj has been allocated to process Pi.

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Resource allocation Graph illustration

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 Resource Allocation Graph
The following are the ways which will help you to check the graph
easily to predict the presence of a deadlock:
(a) If no cycle exists in the resource allocation graph, there is no
deadlock.
(b) If there is a cycle in the graph and each resource has only one
instance, then there is a deadlock. In this case, a cycle is a necessary
and sufficient condition for deadlock.
(c) If there is a cycle in the graph, and each resource has more than
one instance, there may or may not be a deadlock.
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 Example
• Suppose that process P3 requests an instance of resource type R2.
Since no resource instance is currently available, a request edge
P3→ R2 is added to the graph.
• At this point, two minimal cycles exist in the system:
P1→R1→ P2→ R3→ P3→ R2→ P1
P2→ R3 → P3→ R2→ P2

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 Dealing with Deadlocks
• In general, there are four strategies of dealing with deadlock
problem:
1. Deadlock Prevention: Prevent deadlock by resource scheduling so as
to negate at least one of the four conditions.
2. Deadlock Avoidance: Avoid deadlock by careful resource scheduling.
3. Deadlock Detection and Recovery: Detect deadlock and when it
occurs, take steps to recover.
4. The Ostrich Approach: Just ignore the deadlock problem altogether.

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 Deadlock Prevention
1. Elimination of “Mutual Exclusion” Condition
• The mutual exclusion condition must hold for non-shareable
resources.
• That is, several processes cannot simultaneously share a single
resource.
• This condition is difficult to eliminate because some resources, such
as the disc drive and printer, are inherently non-shareable.
• Note that shareable resources like read-only-file do not require
mutually exclusive access and thus cannot be involved in deadlock.
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 Deadlock Prevention
2. Elimination of “Hold and Wait” Condition
• The first alternative is that a process request be granted all the resources it
needs at once, prior to execution.
• The second alternative is to disallow a process from requesting resources
whenever it has previously allocated resources.
• This strategy requires that all the resources a process will need must be
requested at once.
• The system must grant resources on “all or none” basis.
• If the complete set of resources needed by a process is not currently
available, then the process must wait until the complete set is available.
• While the process waits, however, it may not hold any resources.
• Thus the “wait for” condition is denied and deadlocks simply cannot occur.
• This strategy can lead to serious waste of resources.

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 Deadlock Prevention
3. Elimination of “Non-preemption” Condition
• The non-preemption condition can be alleviated by forcing a process
waiting for a resource that cannot immediately be allocated to relinquish
all of its currently held resources, so that other processes may use them
to finish.
• This strategy requires that when a process that is holding some resources
is denied a request for additional resources.
• The process must release its held resources and, if necessary, request
them again together with additional resources.
• Implementation of this strategy denies the “no-preemptive” condition
effectively. 18
 Deadlock Prevention
4. Elimination of “Circular Wait” Condition
• The last condition, the circular wait, can be denied by imposing a
total ordering on all of the resource types and then forcing, all
processes to request the resources in order (increasing or
decreasing).
• This strategy impose a total ordering of all resources types, and to
require that each process requests resources in a numerical order
(increasing or decreasing) of enumeration.
• With this rule, the resource allocation graph can never have a cycle.
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 Deadlock Avoidance
• This approach to the deadlock problem anticipates deadlock before
it actually occurs.
• This approach employs an algorithm to access the possibility that
deadlock could occur and acting accordingly.
• If the necessary conditions for a deadlock are in place, it is still
possible to avoid deadlock by being careful when resources are
allocated.
• It employs the most famous deadlock avoidance algorithm that is
the Banker’s algorithm.

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 Deadlock Detection and Recovery
Deadlock Detection
• Detection of deadlocks is the most practical policy, which being both
liberal and cost efficient most operating systems deploy.
• To detect a deadlock, we must go about in a recursive manner and
simulate the most favoured execution of each unblocked process:
(a) An unblocked process may acquire all the needed resources and will
execute;
(b) It will then release all the acquired resources and remain dormant
thereafter;
(c) The now released resources may wake up some previously blocked
process;
(d) Continue the above steps as long as possible; and
(e) If any blocked processes remain, they are deadlocked.

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 Deadlock Detection and Recovery
RECOVERY FROM DEADLOCK
• There are various options for breaking a deadlock.

1. Recovery by Process Termination

• Abort all deadlocked processes: This method will break the deadlock
cycle clearly by terminating all process.
• This method is cost effective.
• Abort one process at a time until the deadlock cycle is eliminated: This
method terminates one process at a time, and invokes a deadlock-
detection algorithm to determine whether any processes are still
deadlocked.

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 Deadlock Detection and Recovery
RECOVERY FROM DEADLOCK
2. Recovery by Resource Pre-emption
 the operator or system pre-empts some resources from processes and
give these resources to other processes until the deadlock cycle is
broken.
 If pre-emption is required to deal with deadlocks, then three issues
need to be addressed:
• Selecting a victim: The system or operator selects which resources and
which processes are to be pre-empted based on cost factor.
• Rollback: The system or operator must roll back the process to some safe
state and restart it from that state.
• Starvation: The system or operator should ensure that resources will not
always be pre-empted from the same process?

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 Ostrich Algorithm
• It is hoped that deadlock doesn’t happen
• In general, this is a reasonable strategy.
• Deadlock is unlikely to occur very often; a system can run for years
without deadlock occurring.

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 ACTIVITY
1. What is the purpose of deadlock?
2. What is the different between process nodes and resource nodes ?
3. What is a deadlock and what are the four conditions that will create
the deadlock situation?
4. How can deadlock be avoided? Explain with the help of an example.

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End

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