[PATCH 1/2] kbuild: rust: enable KCSAN support

From: Marco Elver

Date: Mon Oct 12 2026 - 09:51:10 EST


Rust supports ThreadSanitizer instrumentation via LLVM, which is what
KCSAN relies on; however, Rust code is not currently instrumented.

Pass -Zsanitizer=thread and the same TSan backend options used for C
code to rustc. Wire up KCSAN_SANITIZE in scripts/Makefile.lib for parity
with C (though rustc currently rejects linking crates with mismatched
instrumentation).

rustc only accepts -Zsanitizer=thread for targets that declare support
for it. Of the targets used by the kernel, this is only possible for the
generated x86_64 target specification, so restrict instrumentation of
Rust code to x86_64 for now via HAVE_KCSAN_RUSTC. On other architectures
Rust code remains uninstrumented as before.

All TSan options used are supported by the LLVM versions of the minimum
supported rustc, so no rustc-option checks are needed (they would also
fail, because x86_64-unknown-none used for option checks does not
support -Zsanitizer=thread).

With this enabled we can detect data races in kernel Rust code and
between Rust and C code.

Signed-off-by: Marco Elver <elver@xxxxxxxxxx>
---
Documentation/dev-tools/kcsan.rst | 7 +++++++
lib/Kconfig.kcsan | 7 +++++++
scripts/Makefile.kcsan | 13 +++++++++++++
scripts/Makefile.lib | 3 +++
scripts/generate_rust_target.rs | 2 +-
5 files changed, 31 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)

diff --git a/Documentation/dev-tools/kcsan.rst b/Documentation/dev-tools/kcsan.rst
index 8575178aa87f..3bb8754f844b 100644
--- a/Documentation/dev-tools/kcsan.rst
+++ b/Documentation/dev-tools/kcsan.rst
@@ -14,6 +14,9 @@ Usage
KCSAN is supported by both GCC and Clang. With GCC we require version 11 or
later, and with Clang also require version 11 or later.

+Rust code is instrumented as well on architectures whose Rust target supports
+it (currently only x86_64; see ``CONFIG_HAVE_KCSAN_RUSTC``).
+
To enable KCSAN configure the kernel with::

CONFIG_KCSAN = y
@@ -121,6 +124,10 @@ the below options are available:

KCSAN_SANITIZE := n

+ Note that ``rustc`` rejects linking crates built with and without KCSAN
+ instrumentation, so ``KCSAN_SANITIZE`` and ``KCSAN_SANITIZE_<target>.o``
+ cannot currently be used for Rust code.
+
.. _"Marking Shared-Memory Accesses" in the LKMM: https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/tools/memory-model/Documentation/access-marking.txt

Furthermore, it is possible to tell KCSAN to show or hide entire classes of
diff --git a/lib/Kconfig.kcsan b/lib/Kconfig.kcsan
index 4ce4b0c0109c..f0096e1c8b61 100644
--- a/lib/Kconfig.kcsan
+++ b/lib/Kconfig.kcsan
@@ -10,6 +10,13 @@ config HAVE_KCSAN_COMPILER
For the list of compilers that support KCSAN, please see
<file:Documentation/dev-tools/kcsan.rst>.

+config HAVE_KCSAN_RUSTC
+ def_bool RUST && X86_64
+ help
+ rustc only accepts -Zsanitizer=thread for targets that declare
+ support for it; of the kernel's Rust targets, only x86_64 does.
+ Elsewhere, Rust code is not instrumented.
+
menuconfig KCSAN
bool "KCSAN: dynamic data race detector"
depends on HAVE_ARCH_KCSAN && HAVE_KCSAN_COMPILER
diff --git a/scripts/Makefile.kcsan b/scripts/Makefile.kcsan
index 19f693b68a96..01af6fd71006 100644
--- a/scripts/Makefile.kcsan
+++ b/scripts/Makefile.kcsan
@@ -24,3 +24,16 @@ kcsan-cflags += $(call cc-option,$(call cc-param,tsan-instrument-func-entry-exit
endif

export CFLAGS_KCSAN := $(kcsan-cflags)
+
+ifdef CONFIG_HAVE_KCSAN_RUSTC
+# The minimum supported rustc's LLVM supports all of these options.
+rustc-param = -Cllvm-args=-$(1)
+kcsan-rustflags := -Zsanitizer=thread \
+ $(call rustc-param,tsan-compound-read-before-write=1) \
+ $(call rustc-param,tsan-distinguish-volatile=1)
+ifndef CONFIG_KCSAN_WEAK_MEMORY
+kcsan-rustflags += $(call rustc-param,tsan-instrument-func-entry-exit=0)
+endif
+endif
+
+export RUSTFLAGS_KCSAN := $(kcsan-rustflags)
diff --git a/scripts/Makefile.lib b/scripts/Makefile.lib
index 0a4fdd8bd975..78f1c23e54be 100644
--- a/scripts/Makefile.lib
+++ b/scripts/Makefile.lib
@@ -98,6 +98,9 @@ ifeq ($(CONFIG_KCSAN),y)
_c_flags += $(if $(patsubst n%,, \
$(KCSAN_SANITIZE_$(target-stem).o)$(KCSAN_SANITIZE)$(is-kernel-object)), \
$(CFLAGS_KCSAN))
+_rust_flags += $(if $(patsubst n%,, \
+ $(KCSAN_SANITIZE_$(target-stem).o)$(KCSAN_SANITIZE)$(is-kernel-object)), \
+ $(RUSTFLAGS_KCSAN))
# Some uninstrumented files provide implied barriers required to avoid false
# positives: set KCSAN_INSTRUMENT_BARRIERS for barrier instrumentation only.
_c_flags += $(if $(patsubst n%,, \
diff --git a/scripts/generate_rust_target.rs b/scripts/generate_rust_target.rs
index 7687b0dd5474..4b02bffa6b46 100644
--- a/scripts/generate_rust_target.rs
+++ b/scripts/generate_rust_target.rs
@@ -231,7 +231,7 @@ fn main() {
}
ts.push("features", features);
ts.push("llvm-target", "x86_64-linux-gnu");
- ts.push("supported-sanitizers", ["kcfi", "kernel-address"]);
+ ts.push("supported-sanitizers", ["kcfi", "kernel-address", "thread"]);
if cfg.rustc_version_atleast(1, 91, 0) {
ts.push("target-pointer-width", 64);
} else {
--
2.56.0.385.gd3acb90ef8-goog