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Chapter 6
Deadlock
Compiled by: Biniyam A.
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Deadlock
• System Model
• Deadlock Characterization
• Methods for Handling Deadlocks
• Deadlock Prevention
• Deadlock Avoidance
• Deadlock Detection
• Recovery from Deadlock
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Deadlock
• At the end of this chapter students are
expected to answer the following questions
• What is deadlock?
• How does a deadlock happens?
• 4 conditions for a deadlock to occur in OS
• Deadlock handling strategies
 Chapter Objectives
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• 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 …(definition)
• To develop a description of deadlocks, which prevent sets of
concurrent processes from completing their tasks
• To present a number of different methods for preventing or
avoiding deadlocks in a computer system
 The Deadlock Problem
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A set of blocked processes each holding a resource and
waiting to acquire a resource held by another process
in the set.
Example
System has 2 tape drives.
P1 and P2 each hold one tape drive and each needs another
one.
Example
semaphores A and B, initialized to 1
P0 P1
wait (A); wait(B)
wait (B); wait(A)
 Bridge Crossing Example
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Traffic only in one direction.

Each section of a bridge can be viewed as a resource.
If a deadlock occurs, it can be resolved if one car backs
up (preempt resources and rollback).
Several cars may have to be backed up if a deadlock
occurs.
Starvation is possible.
 System Model
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Resource types R1, R2, . . ., Rm
CPU cycles, memory space, I/O devices
Each resource type Ri has Wi instances.
Preemptable(memory) vs nonpreemptable(printer, CD
recorder) resources
Nonpreemptable resources are potential deadlocks
Each process utilizes a resource as follows:
Request – request resource
Use – use resource
Release – release resource
 Deadlock Characterization
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Deadlock can arise if four conditions hold simultaneously.

• Four necessary conditions for deadlock to exist and must be present at the
same time for deadlock to occur
• Mutual exclusion: only one process at a time can use a resource
• Hold and wait: a process holding at least one resource is waiting to acquire
additional resources held by other processes
• No preemption: a resource can be released only voluntarily by the process
holding it, after that process has completed its task
• Circular wait: there exists a set {P0, P1, …, Pn} 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 Pn is
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 Resource-Allocation Graph
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A set of vertices V and a set of edges E.

• V is partitioned into two types:

• P = {P1, P2, …, Pn}, the set consisting of all the processes
in the system

• R = {R1, R2, …, Rm}, the set consisting of all resource types

in the system

• request edge – directed edge Pi  Rj

• assignment edge – directed edge Rj  Pi
 Resource-Allocation Graph (Cont.)
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• Process

• Resource Type with 4 instances

• Pi requests instance of Rj Pi
Rj

• Pi is holding an instance of Rj Pi
Rj
 Example of a Resource Allocation Graph
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 Resource Allocation Graph With A Deadlock
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 Graph With A Cycle But No Deadlock
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 Basic Facts
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• If graph contains no cycles  no deadlock

• If graph contains a cycle 
• if only one instance per resource type, then
deadlock
• if several instances per resource type,
possibility of deadlock
 Methods for Handling Deadlocks
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• Ensure that the system will never enter a deadlock state:

• Deadlock prevention and avoidance
• Allow the system to enter a deadlock state and then
recover
• Ignore the problem and pretend that deadlocks never
occur in the system; used by most operating systems,
including UNIX – just rebooting the system but not
recommended specially when the processes are critical
 Strategies to handle Deadlocks
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• Preemption – take one resource from one process and

give to the other
• Rollback – if possibility of deadlock is there, the system
records state of each process and when deadlock
occurs, roll everything back to the last checkpoint
• Kill one or more process – simplest way of handling
deadlock
 Deadlock Prevention
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Restrain the ways request can be made

• PREVENTING Mutual Exclusion – not required for sharable
resources (e.g., read-only files); must hold for non-sharable
resources
• Making resource sharable
• PREVENTING Hold and Wait – must guarantee that whenever a
process requests a resource, it does not hold any other resources
• Require process to request and be allocated all its resources before
it begins execution, or allow process to request resources only when
the process has none allocated to it.
• Low resource utilization; starvation possible
 Deadlock Prevention (Cont.)
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• PREVENTING No Preemption –
• If a process that is holding some resources requests another resource
that cannot be immediately allocated to it, then all resources currently
being held are released
• Preempted resources are added to the list of resources for which the
process is waiting
• Process will be restarted only when it can regain its old resources, as
well as the new ones that it is requesting
• PREVENTING Circular Wait – impose a total ordering of all
resource types, and require that each process requests resources
in an increasing order of enumeration
 Deadlock Avoidance
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• Requires that the system has some additional a priori information
available
• Simplest and most useful model requires that each process declare the
maximum number of resources of each type that it may need
• The deadlock-avoidance algorithm dynamically examines the resource-
allocation state to ensure that there can never be a circular-wait condition
• Resource-allocation state is defined by the number of available and
allocated resources, and the maximum demands of the processes
 Safe State
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• When a process requests an available resource, system must decide if
immediate allocation leaves the system in a safe state
• System is in safe state if there exists a sequence <P1, P2, …, Pn> of ALL the
processes in the systems such that for each Pi, the resources that Pi can still
request can be satisfied by currently available resources + resources held by
all the Pj, with j < I
• That is:
• If Pi resource needs are not immediately available, then Pi can wait until all
Pj have finished
• When Pj is finished, Pi can obtain needed resources, execute, return
allocated resources, and terminate
• When Pi terminates, Pi +1 can obtain its needed resources, and so on
 Basic Facts
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• If a system is in safe state  no deadlocks

• If a system is in unsafe state  possibility of deadlock

• Avoidance  ensure that a system will never enter an

unsafe state.
 Safe, Unsafe, Deadlock State
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 Avoidance Algorithms
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• Single instance of a resource type

• Use a resource-allocation graph

• Multiple instances of a resource type

• Use the banker’s algorithm
 Resource-Allocation Graph Scheme
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• Claim edge Pi  Rj indicated that process Pj may request resource

Rj; represented by a dashed line
• Claim edge converts to request edge when a process requests a
resource
• Request edge converted to an assignment edge when the resource
is allocated to the process
• When a resource is released by a process, assignment edge
reconverts to a claim edge
• Resources must be claimed a priori in the system
 Resource-Allocation Graph
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 Unsafe State In Resource-Allocation Graph
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 Resource-Allocation Graph Algorithm
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• Suppose that process Pi requests a resource Rj
• The request can be granted only if converting the
request edge to an assignment edge does not result in
the formation of a cycle in the resource allocation
graph
 Banker’s Algorithm
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• Multiple instances

• Each process must a priori claim maximum use

• When a process requests a resource it may have to

wait

• When a process gets all its resources it must return

them in a finite amount of time
 Data Structures for the Banker’s Algorithm
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Let n = number of processes, and m = number of resources types.

• Available: Vector of length m. If available [j] = k, there are k instances of resource

type Rj available i.e. how many instances of each resource is available in the system
• Max: n x m matrix. If Max [i,j] = k, then process Pi may request at most k instances
of resource type Rj i.e. how many instances of each resource each process can max
request
• Allocation: n x m matrix. If Allocation[i,j] = k then Pi is currently allocated k
instances of Rj i.e. how many instances of each resource each process currently holds
• Need: n x m matrix. If Need[i,j] = k, then Pi may need k more instances of Rj to
complete its task i.e. how many instances of each resource each process need to
complete its execution
• Need [i,j] = Max[i,j] – Allocation [i,j]
 Safety Algorithm
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1. Let Work and Finish be vectors of length m and n, respectively.
Initialize:
Work = Available
Finish [i] = false for i = 0, 1, …, n- 1
2. Find an i such that both:
(a) Finish [i] = false
(b) Needi  Work
If no such i exists, go to step 4
3. Work = Work + Allocationi
Finish[i] = true
go to step 2
4. If Finish [i] == true for all i, then the system is in a safe state
 Resource-Request Algorithm for Process Pi
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Requesti = request vector for process Pi. If Requesti [j] = k then
process Pi wants k instances of resource type Rj
1. If Requesti  Needi go to step 2. Otherwise, raise error condition, since
process has exceeded its maximum claim
2. If Requesti  Available, go to step 3. Otherwise Pi must wait, since
resources are not available
3. Pretend to allocate requested resources to Pi by modifying the state as
follows:
Available = Available – Requesti;
Allocationi = Allocationi + Requesti;
Needi = Needi – Requesti;
 If safe  the resources are allocated to Pi
 If unsafe  Pi must wait, and the old resource-allocation state is restored
 Example (Cont.)
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• Available = Total – Total Allocation
• Remaining Need = Max – Allocation
• Bankers algorithm says
• If Need(i) <= Available,
• Then,
• Available = Available + Allocation
• This means that the process is releasing the holding resource, and the system is going
to allocate the released resource to the other process
 Example of Banker’s Algorithm
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5 processes P0 through P4; 3 resource types:
A (10 instances), B (5instances), and C (7 instances)
Snapshot at time T0:
Allocation Max Available
process ABC ABC ABC
P0 010 753 332
P1 200 322
P2 302 902
P3 211 222
P4 002 433
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 Example (Cont.)
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• The content of the matrix Need is defined to be Max – Allocation
Need
ABC
P0 743
P1 122
P2 600
P3 011
P4 431
• The system is in a safe state since the sequence
 Example: P1 Request (1,0,2)
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Check that Request  Available (that is, (1,0,2)  (3,3,2)  true
Allocation Need Available
ABC ABC ABC
P0 0 1 0 7 4 3 2 3 0
P1 3 0 2 0 2 0 Executing safety algorithm shows that
sequence < P1, P3, P4, P0, P2>
P2 3 0 2 6 0 0
satisfies safety requirement.
P3 2 1 1 0 1 1
Can request for (3,3,0) by P4 be
P4 0 0 2 4 3 1 granted?
Can request for (0,2,0) by P0 be
granted?
 Deadlock Detection
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Allow system to enter deadlock state

Detection algorithm

Recovery scheme
 Single Instance of Each Resource Type
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• Maintain wait-for graph

• Nodes are processes
• Pi  Pj if Pi is waiting for Pj

• Periodically invoke an algorithm that searches for a cycle

in the graph. If there is a cycle, there exists a deadlock

• An algorithm to detect a cycle in a graph requires an

order of n2 operations, where n is the number of vertices
in the graph
 Resource-Allocation Graph and Wait-for Graph
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Resource-Allocation Graph Corresponding wait-for graph

 Several Instances of a Resource Type
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• Available: A vector of length m indicates the number of available

resources of each type
• Allocation: An n x m matrix defines the number of resources of each
type currently allocated to each process
• Request: An n x m matrix indicates the current request of each process.
If Request [i][j] = k, then process Pi is requesting k more instances of
resource type Rj.
• Available = total resource – total allocation
• Execution = available – request
• Return available resource = available + allocation + request
 Detection Algorithm
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1. Let Work and Finish be vectors of length m and n,
respectively Initialize:
(a) Work = Available
(b) For i = 1,2, …, n, if Allocationi  0, then
Finish[i] = false; otherwise, Finish[i] = true

2. Find an index i such that both:

(a) Finish[i] == false
(b) Requesti  Work
If no such i exists, go to step 4
 Detection Algorithm (Cont.)
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3. Work = Work + Allocationi

Finish[i] = true
go to step 2

4. If Finish[i] == false, for some i, 1  i  n, then the

system is in deadlock state. Moreover, if Finish[i]
== false, then Pi is deadlocked
Algorithm requires an order of O(m x n2) operations to detect
whether the system is in deadlocked state
 Example of Detection Algorithm (try yourself)
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Five processes P0 through P4; three resource types
A (7 instances), B (2 instances), and C (6 instances)
Snapshot at time T0:
Process Allocation Request Available
ABC ABC ABC
P0 010 000 000
P1 200 202
P2 303 000
P3 211 100
P4 002 002
 Example (Cont.)
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P2 requests an additional instance of type C
Request
ABC
P0 0 0 0
P1 2 0 2
P2 0 0 1
P3 1 0 0
P4 0 0 2
State of system?
Can reclaim resources held by process P0, but insufficient resources to fulfill
other processes; requests
Deadlock exists, consisting of processes P1, P2, P3, and P4
 Detection-Algorithm Usage
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• When, and how often, to invoke depends on:

• How often a deadlock is likely to occur?
• How many processes will need to be rolled back?
• one for each disjoint cycle

• If detection algorithm is invoked arbitrarily, there may be

many cycles in the resource graph and so we would not be
able to tell which of the many deadlocked processes
“caused” the deadlock.
 Recovery from Deadlock: Process Termination
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• Abort all deadlocked processes
• Abort one process at a time until the deadlock cycle is eliminated

• In which order should we choose to abort?

1. Priority of the process
2. How long process has computed, and how much longer to completion
3. Resources the process has used
4. Resources process needs to complete
5. How many processes will need to be terminated
6. Is process interactive or batch?
 Recovery from Deadlock: Resource Preemption
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• Selecting a victim – minimize cost

• Rollback – return to some safe state, restart process for

that state

• Starvation – same process may always be picked as

victim, include number of rollback in cost factor
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End