When a detection algorithm determines that a deadlock exists, several alternatives are available. One possibility is to inform the operator that a deadlock has occurred and to let the operator deal with the deadlock manually.
Another possibility is to let the system recover from the deadlock automatically. There are two options for breaking a deadlock. One is simply to abort one or more processes to break the circular wait. The other is to preempt some resources from one or more of the deadlocked processes
Process Termination
To eliminate deadlocks by aborting a process, we use one of two methods. In both methods, the system reclaims all resources allocated to the terminated processes
- Abort all deadlocked processes. This method clearly will break the deadlock cycle, but at great expense. The deadlocked processes may have computed for a long time, and the results of these partial computations must be discarded and probably will have to be recomputed later
- Abort one process at a time until the deadlock cycle is eliminated. This method incurs considerable overhead, since after each process is aborted, a deadlock-detection algorithm must be invoked to determine whether any processes are still deadlocked.
Aborting a process may not be easy. If the process was in the midst of updating a file, terminating it will leave that file in an incorrect state. Similarly, if the process was in the midst of printing data on a printer, the system must reset the printer to a correct state before printing the next job
the minimum cost. Unfortunately, the term minimum cost is not a precise one. Many factors may affect which process is chosen, including:
- What the priority of the process is
- How long the process has computed and how much longer the process will compute before completing its designated task
- How many and what types of resources the process has used (for example, whether the resources are simple to preempt)
- How many more resources the process needs in order to complete
- How many processes will need to be terminated
- Whether the process is interactive or batch