A dirty work around. Change the Linux console to /dev/tty2. Edit the last line of /etc/inittab;
1:2345::/sbin/getty 38400 tty1Then reboot and ./start-android.sh.
2:2345:respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 tty2

Pressing [Fn] and cursor at the same time switches the display between Android GUI and the text console. In the text console, Android shell commands like getprop, setprop, service call and mem_profiler can be executed.
In emulator environment, these commands can be run by adb shell.