The item in make menuconfig for setting/clearing CONFIG_VGA_CONSOLE is missing. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Start make menuconfig. 2. Go to menu screen Device Drivers/Graphics Support/Console Display driver support. Actual Results: The item for "VGA text console" is missing. Expected Results: That item should be present on the screen. Note the first item in .../drivers/video/console/Kconfig, that for VGA_CONSOLE. Tentative analysis: The item VGA_CONSOLE is conditional on lots of other items, including !SPARC. SPARC appears not to be defined. Therefore !SPARC isn't defined either, and the condition for VGA_CONSOLE fails. Several other needed items also aren't defined. Guess: The Kconfig which defines SPARC has been excluded from the kernel configuration as an optimisation, since SPARC was supposedly "not relevant" any more.
Attach your .config, please
(In reply to Mike Pagano from comment #1) > Attach your .config, please Hello, Mike. As yet, that kernel version on my machine is new - it has no .config. The same problem has occurred on earlier versions, in particular 5.4.80-gentoo and 5.4.80-gentoo-r1. It did not occur on 4.19.97, for example.
Not a bug: https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/v5.4/drivers/video/console/Kconfig#L9: > menu "Console display driver support" > > config VGA_CONSOLE > bool "VGA text console" if EXPERT || !X86 You need to enable CONFIG_EXPERT in "General setup" -> "Configure standard kernel features (expert users)" which is disabled by default to see that item.
(In reply to Thomas Deutschmann from comment #3) > Not a bug: > > https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/v5.4/drivers/video/console/Kconfig#L9: > > > menu "Console display driver support" > > > > config VGA_CONSOLE > > bool "VGA text console" if EXPERT || !X86 > > You need to enable CONFIG_EXPERT in "General setup" -> "Configure standard > kernel features (expert users)" which is disabled by default to see that > item. Sorry for the noise. What threw me was that the "if EXPERT || !X86" was not displayed in the help entry for VGA_CONSOLE. Next time around, I'll check the Kconfig sources first.
