Types of Error
Below are the two types of errors that are seen in the context of the Operating System:
1. Transient Failure
Transient failures are basically defined as temporary or short-term errors that occur in the system, or in a certain process, in the operating system. Basically, these are caused due to some temporal conditions which are not very severe. Transient Failure does not persist in problems with the hardware or any software activity. Transient failures are normal failures and are not more severe, these can be recoverable failures and the system can continue its normal operations by overcoming this temporal issue after performing the solution for recovering the errors from these transient failures.
Example: Deadlock Condition, where processes cause temporary conflicts in accessing shared resources.
2. Permanent Failure
Permanent failure is the most severe problem, or severe error in the operating system, which cannot be recovered or resolved through some error handling activities or some normal activities or operations. Permanent failure deals with the problems that are occurred in hardware or software components. And this cannot be easily recovered as sometimes the system completely crashes and stops the execution of all the processes or hardware. This is the most severe problem which requires some more complex solutions to recover the system from this failure.
Example: Defective CPU that constantly generates incorrect results or false outputs.
Error Handling in Operating System
An operating system is defined as an interface between the computer system and its users. Once the operating system is loaded into the computer system through the boot program it is responsible for managing all the applications on the device. The operating system is a significant component of the system software in a computer system.
As the operating system is a collection of various software there may be some errors that can cause the system to have some severe fault or severe stoppage of any service which can lead to false results or some defective results to handle this error handling should be properly applied. The below article covers in detail the error, its types, the concept of error handling, and their needs.