[PATCH 2/2] kasan: Update required compiler versions in documentation

From: Marco Elver
Date: Mon Jun 29 2020 - 16:45:43 EST


Updates the recently changed compiler requirements for KASAN. In
particular, we require GCC >= 8.3.0, and add a note that Clang 11
supports OOB detection of globals.

Fixes: 7b861a53e46b ("kasan: Bump required compiler version")
Fixes: acf7b0bf7dcf ("kasan: Fix required compiler version")
Signed-off-by: Marco Elver <elver@xxxxxxxxxx>
---
Documentation/dev-tools/kasan.rst | 7 ++-----
lib/Kconfig.kasan | 24 +++++++++++++++---------
2 files changed, 17 insertions(+), 14 deletions(-)

diff --git a/Documentation/dev-tools/kasan.rst b/Documentation/dev-tools/kasan.rst
index c652d740735d..15a2a53e77b0 100644
--- a/Documentation/dev-tools/kasan.rst
+++ b/Documentation/dev-tools/kasan.rst
@@ -13,11 +13,8 @@ KASAN uses compile-time instrumentation to insert validity checks before every
memory access, and therefore requires a compiler version that supports that.

Generic KASAN is supported in both GCC and Clang. With GCC it requires version
-4.9.2 or later for basic support and version 5.0 or later for detection of
-out-of-bounds accesses for stack and global variables and for inline
-instrumentation mode (see the Usage section). With Clang it requires version
-7.0.0 or later and it doesn't support detection of out-of-bounds accesses for
-global variables yet.
+8.3.0 or later. With Clang it requires version 7.0.0 or later, but detection of
+out-of-bounds accesses for global variables is only supported since Clang 11.

Tag-based KASAN is only supported in Clang and requires version 7.0.0 or later.

diff --git a/lib/Kconfig.kasan b/lib/Kconfig.kasan
index 89053defc0d9..047b53dbfd58 100644
--- a/lib/Kconfig.kasan
+++ b/lib/Kconfig.kasan
@@ -40,6 +40,7 @@ choice
software tag-based KASAN (a version based on software memory
tagging, arm64 only, similar to userspace HWASan, enabled with
CONFIG_KASAN_SW_TAGS).
+
Both generic and tag-based KASAN are strictly debugging features.

config KASAN_GENERIC
@@ -51,16 +52,18 @@ config KASAN_GENERIC
select STACKDEPOT
help
Enables generic KASAN mode.
- Supported in both GCC and Clang. With GCC it requires version 4.9.2
- or later for basic support and version 5.0 or later for detection of
- out-of-bounds accesses for stack and global variables and for inline
- instrumentation mode (CONFIG_KASAN_INLINE). With Clang it requires
- version 3.7.0 or later and it doesn't support detection of
- out-of-bounds accesses for global variables yet.
+
+ This mode is supported in both GCC and Clang. With GCC it requires
+ version 8.3.0 or later. With Clang it requires version 7.0.0 or
+ later, but detection of out-of-bounds accesses for global variables
+ is supported only since Clang 11.
+
This mode consumes about 1/8th of available memory at kernel start
and introduces an overhead of ~x1.5 for the rest of the allocations.
The performance slowdown is ~x3.
+
For better error detection enable CONFIG_STACKTRACE.
+
Currently CONFIG_KASAN_GENERIC doesn't work with CONFIG_DEBUG_SLAB
(the resulting kernel does not boot).

@@ -73,15 +76,19 @@ config KASAN_SW_TAGS
select STACKDEPOT
help
Enables software tag-based KASAN mode.
+
This mode requires Top Byte Ignore support by the CPU and therefore
- is only supported for arm64.
- This mode requires Clang version 7.0.0 or later.
+ is only supported for arm64. This mode requires Clang version 7.0.0
+ or later.
+
This mode consumes about 1/16th of available memory at kernel start
and introduces an overhead of ~20% for the rest of the allocations.
This mode may potentially introduce problems relating to pointer
casting and comparison, as it embeds tags into the top byte of each
pointer.
+
For better error detection enable CONFIG_STACKTRACE.
+
Currently CONFIG_KASAN_SW_TAGS doesn't work with CONFIG_DEBUG_SLAB
(the resulting kernel does not boot).

@@ -107,7 +114,6 @@ config KASAN_INLINE
memory accesses. This is faster than outline (in some workloads
it gives about x2 boost over outline instrumentation), but
make kernel's .text size much bigger.
- For CONFIG_KASAN_GENERIC this requires GCC 5.0 or later.

endchoice

--
2.27.0.212.ge8ba1cc988-goog