diff --git a/misc/cf-support b/misc/cf-support
index df7d1439b0..88ba2fb3b8 100755
--- a/misc/cf-support
+++ b/misc/cf-support
@@ -120,7 +120,7 @@ make_temp_dir()
   else
     # shellcheck disable=SC2021
     # ^^ legacy/POSIX requires square brackets
-    _tmp="/tmp/`tr -dc "[A-Z][a-z][0-9]" </dev/urandom | head -c 8`"
+    _tmp="/tmp/`LC_CTYPE=C tr -dc "[A-Z][a-z][0-9]" </dev/urandom | dd count=1 bs=8 2>/dev/null`"
     mkdir "$_tmp"
     echo "$_tmp"
   fi
@@ -150,7 +150,11 @@ mkdir -p "$tmpdir"
 
 echo "Analyzing CFEngine core dumps"
 _core_log="$tmpdir"/core-dump.log
-_sysctl_kernel_core_pattern="$(sysctl -n kernel.core_pattern)"
+if command -v sysctl >/dev/null; then
+  _sysctl_kernel_core_pattern="$(sysctl -n kernel.core_pattern)"
+else
+  _sysctl_kernel_core_pattern=""
+fi
 if expr "$_sysctl_kernel_core_pattern" : ".*/systemd-coredump.*" > /dev/null 2>&1; then
   echo "Found systemd-coredump used in sysctl kernel.core_pattern \"$_sysctl_kernel_core_pattern\""
   echo "Using coredumpctl to analyze CFEngine core dumps"