Three phase commit : study case Consider a group of five processors implementing three-phase commit protocol. During the execution of the protocol, the coordinator and one other process crash. Two of the remaining processes are waiting in "READY" state for the coordinator while the third process is in "PREPARE COMMIT" state. Can they continue and complete the protocol without waiting for recovery of the crashed processes? Do they COMMIT or ABORT? Which state can the crashed process be in?

In my opinion, the crashed processor maybe was in the "ABORT" state, so how can the other processors know the "global decision"?
I found the answer consulting the book "Distributed System : Principles and Paradigms" (Andrew S. Tanenbaum - Maarten Van Steen). First of all it is possible to continue just because 3PC is non-blocking protocol by definition. A processor can reach the state “PRE-COMMIT” only if the coordinator was in state “PRE-COMMIT” (thus each processor sent a COMMIT request), so the crashed processor could not be for sure in state “INIT” nor in "ABORT", but at least in the state “READY”. Anyway, all the “alive” processors, after seeing the “PRE-COMMIT”, will go in “COMMIT” state.