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Deadlocks in OS

1) A deadlock occurs when two or more threads or processes are blocked waiting for resources held by each other in a circular chain. 2) There are four necessary conditions for deadlock: mutual exclusion, hold and wait, no preemption, and circular wait. 3) In an operating system, deadlock arises when multiple processes are blocked because each is holding a resource and waiting for a resource held by another process in the system. Detection and recovery methods can be used to handle deadlocks after they occur.

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105 views2 pages

Deadlocks in OS

1) A deadlock occurs when two or more threads or processes are blocked waiting for resources held by each other in a circular chain. 2) There are four necessary conditions for deadlock: mutual exclusion, hold and wait, no preemption, and circular wait. 3) In an operating system, deadlock arises when multiple processes are blocked because each is holding a resource and waiting for a resource held by another process in the system. Detection and recovery methods can be used to handle deadlocks after they occur.

Uploaded by

47 Bhushan Bari
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd

DEADLOCK

A deadlock, also called as deadly embrace, is a situation in which two threads are each
unknowingly waiting for resource held by other. Example #1 A system has 2 disk drives P1
and P2 each hold one disk drive and each need the other one. Task #1 wants the scanner while
holding the printer.

Deadlock can be prevented by eliminating any of the four necessary conditions, which are
mutual exclusion, hold and wait, no preemption, and circular wait. Mutual exclusion, hold
and wait and no preemption cannot be violated practically.

A deadlock in OS is a situation in which more than one process is blocked because it is holding
a resource and also requires some resource that is acquired by some other process. The four
necessary conditions for a deadlock situation to occur are mutual exclusion, hold and wait,
no preemption and circular set.

 process in operating system uses resources in the following way. 


1) Requests a resource 
2) Use the resource 
3) Releases the resource 
Deadlock is a situation where a set of processes are blocked because each process is
holding a resource and waiting for another resource acquired by some other process. 
Consider an example when two trains are coming toward each other on the same track
and there is only one track, none of the trains can move once they are in front of each
other. A similar situation occurs in operating systems when there are two or more
processes that hold some resources and wait for resources held by other(s). For example,
in the below diagram, Process 1 is holding Resource 1 and waiting for resource 2 which is
acquired by process 2, and process 2 is waiting for resource 1. 
 
 
Deadlock can arise if the following four conditions hold simultaneously (Necessary
Conditions) 
Mutual Exclusion: Two or more resources are non-shareable (Only one process can use
at a time) 
Hold and Wait: A process is holding at least one resource and waiting for resources. 
No Preemption: A resource cannot be taken from a process unless the process releases
the resource. 
Circular Wait: A set of processes are waiting for each other in circular form. 
Methods for handling deadlock 
There are three ways to handle deadlock 
1) Deadlock prevention or avoidance: The idea is to not let the system into a deadlock
state. 
One can zoom into each category individually, Prevention is done by negating one of
above mentioned necessary conditions for deadlock. 
Avoidance is kind of futuristic in nature. By using strategy of “Avoidance”, we have to
make an assumption. We need to ensure that all information about resources which
process will need are known to us prior to execution of the process. We use Banker’s
algorithm (Which is in-turn a gift from Dijkstra) in order to avoid deadlock. 
2) Deadlock detection and recovery: Let deadlock occur, then do preemption to handle it
once occurred. 
3) Ignore the problem altogether: If deadlock is very rare, then let it happen and reboot the
system. This is the approach that both Windows and UNIX take. 

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