System V semaphores provide counting semaphores in the Oracle Solaris OS. A semaphore is a counter used to provide access to a shared data object for multiple processes. In addition to the standard set and release operations for semaphores, System V semaphores can have values that are incremented and decremented as needed (for example, to represent the number of resources available). System V semaphores also provide the ability to do operations on a group of semaphores simultaneously as well as to have the system undo the last operation by a process if the process dies.