Chapter 7: Deadlocks

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Chapter 7: Deadlocks
 System Model
 Deadlock Characterization
 Methods for Handling Deadlocks
 Deadlock Prevention
 Deadlock Avoidance
 Deadlock Detection
 Recovery from Deadlock

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 7.2 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Chapter Objectives
 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

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 7.3 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 System Model

 System consists of resources

 Resource types R1, R2, . . ., Rm

CPU cycles, memory space, I/O devices

 Each resource type Ri has Wi instances.

 Each process utilizes a resource as follows:

 request
 use
 release

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 7.4 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Deadlock Characterization

Deadlock can arise if four conditions hold simultaneously.

 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
waiting for a resource that is held by P0.

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 7.5 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Resource-Allocation Graph

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

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 7.6 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Resource-Allocation Graph (Cont.)
 Process

 Resource Type with 4 instances

 Pi requests instance of Rj

Pi
Rj
 Pi is holding an instance of Rj

Pi
Rj

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 7.7 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Example of a Resource Allocation Graph

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 7.8 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Resource Allocation Graph With A Deadlock

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 7.9 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Graph With A Cycle But No Deadlock

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 7.10 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Basic Facts

 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

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 7.11 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Methods for Handling Deadlocks

 Ensure that the system will never enter a deadlock state

 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

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 7.12 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Deadlock Prevention

Restrain the ways request can be made

 Mutual Exclusion – not required for sharable resources; must
hold for nonsharable resources

 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
 Low resource utilization; starvation possible

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 7.13 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013
 Deadlock Prevention (Cont.)
 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

 Circular Wait – impose a total ordering of all resource types, and

require that each process requests resources in an increasing order of
enumeration

Operating System Concepts – 9th Edition 7.14 Silberschatz, Galvin and Gagne ©2013