okay. think i figured it out. nspawn doesn't like pipes.

extra/packages.both

@@ -157,7 +157,7 @@ lsscsi
 lxde
 lynx
 lz4
-#lzip
+lzip
 lzo
 lzop
 macchanger
@@ -193,7 +193,7 @@ nettle
 networkmanager
 nginx-devel
 ngrep
-nmap
+nmap-nogui
 nmon
 ntfs-3g
 ntfsfixboot

lib/05-jenny_craig.func.sh

@@ -40,7 +40,6 @@ function jenny_craig () {
   # DISABLE when no longer building custom kernel
   find ${BUILDDIR}/usr/lib/modules/ -maxdepth 1 -iname "*-ARCH" -exec rm -rf '{}' \;
   find ${BUILDDIR}/ -type f -name "*.pacnew" -exec rm -rf '{}' \;
-  sed -i -e '/^MAKEFLAGS=.*$/d' ${BUILDDIR}/etc/makepkg.conf
   rm -rf ${BUILDDIR}/usr/share/locale/*
   mv -f ${BUILDDIR}/tmp/locale.alias ${BUILDDIR}/usr/share/locale/.
   rm -rf ${BUILDDIR}/var/cache/pacman/*

lib/mk.chroot.sh

@@ -181,15 +181,6 @@ EOF
    ${CHROOTCMD} ${CHROOTDIR64}/ 'pacman --noconfirm -R gcc-libs libtool' >> "${LOGFILE}.${FUNCNAME}" 2>&1
    ${CHROOTCMD} ${CHROOTDIR64}/ 'pacman --noconfirm -S multilib-devel' >> "${LOGFILE}.${FUNCNAME}" 2>&1
  fi
-
- # And let's do some more optimization.
- if [[ "${I_AM_A_RACECAR}" == "y" ]];
- then
-  CPUCNT=$(grep processor /proc/cpuinfo | wc -l)
-  ((CPUCNT++))
-  sed -i -e "/^[[:space:]]*#*MAKEFLAGS=.*$/aMAKEFLAGS=\"-j${CPUCNT}\"" ${CHROOTDIR64}/etc/makepkg.conf
-  sed -i -e "/^[[:space:]]*#*MAKEFLAGS=.*$/aMAKEFLAGS=\"-j${CPUCNT}\"" ${CHROOTDIR32}/etc/makepkg.conf
- fi
  
  # preprocessing
  sed -i -e '/base-devel/d ; /multilib-devel/d' ${BASEDIR}/extra/packages.*