diff --git a/MLIR.cmake b/MLIR.cmake
index c9c5198..873c480 100644
--- a/MLIR.cmake
+++ b/MLIR.cmake
@@ -62,7 +62,7 @@ function(find_mlir_lib lib)
           PATHS ${LLVM_PROJECT_LIB}
           NO_DEFAULT_PATH)
   if(${${lib}} STREQUAL ${lib}-NOTFOUND)
-    message(FATAL_ERROR "${lib} not found")
+    message(FATAL_ERROR "${lib} not found, did you forget to build llvm-project?")
   endif()
 endfunction(find_mlir_lib)
 
diff --git a/src/Runtime/CMakeLists.txt b/src/Runtime/CMakeLists.txt
index 7cc2a91..d091d70 100644
--- a/src/Runtime/CMakeLists.txt
+++ b/src/Runtime/CMakeLists.txt
@@ -1,4 +1,6 @@
-add_library(cruntime
+# Create shared libcruntime.so since model.so linkage for backend tests
+# will fail on x86 Linux if cruntime is statically linked.
+add_library(cruntime SHARED
         DynMemRef.cpp
         DynMemRef.h
         DataType.h)
diff --git a/test/backend/CMakeLists.txt b/test/backend/CMakeLists.txt
index a370170..39075b3 100644
--- a/test/backend/CMakeLists.txt
+++ b/test/backend/CMakeLists.txt
@@ -3,7 +3,7 @@ configure_file(test_config.py.in test_config.py)
 
 find_package(PythonInterp 3 REQUIRED)
 add_custom_target(check-onnx-backend
-        COMMAND ${PYTHON_EXECUTABLE}
+        COMMAND LD_PRELOAD=${CMAKE_BINARY_DIR}/lib/libcruntime.so ${PYTHON_EXECUTABLE}
         ${CMAKE_CURRENT_BINARY_DIR}/test.py)
 
 add_dependencies(check-onnx-backend onnx-mlir)