%general-entities; ]> The standard I/O streams of the initial shell process is connected with /dev/console. However, the testsuite of some packages may expect the standard I/O streams to be connected with a real TTY device node. Spawn a new shell process on the TTY device with agetty: agetty -n -l /bin/bash tty0 If you are working via a serial console, replace tty0 with the name of the serial console device node, for example ttyS0. The command above spawns a new shell process on the TTY device specified in the command, and the initial shell process will run in background as an init process with very limited functions. The new shell process will output: bash: cannot set terminal process group (-1): Inappropriate ioctl for device bash: no job control in this shell This is normal because the shell is not assigned with a controlling terminal yet. Now set up controlling terminal and environment variables: exec setsid -c /usr/bin/env -i \ HOME=/root \ TERM="$TERM" \ PS1='(lfs) \u:\w\$ ' \ PATH=/usr/bin:/usr/sbin \ /bin/bash --login The command replace the current shell process with a new shell process, with controlling terminal set up. The -i option given to the env command will clear all variables of the environment. After that, only the HOME, TERM, PS1, and PATH variables are set again. The TERM=$TERM construct will set the TERM variable to the default value specified by agetty. This variable is needed for programs like vim and less to operate properly. If other variables are desired, such as CFLAGS or CXXFLAGS, this is a good place to set them again. Notice that /tools/bin is not in the PATH. This means that the cross toolchain will no longer be used on the target machine. Note that the bash prompt will say I have no name! This is normal because the /etc/passwd file has not been created yet. It is important that all the commands throughout the remainder of this chapter and the following chapters are run from within the environment we've set. If you leave this environment for any reason (rebooting for example), ensure that the virtual kernel filesystems are mounted as explained in and and set up the environment again before continuing with the installation.