No value for $TERM and no -T specified

What ultimately worked for me was to check whether the shell was an interactive shell. I based the solution on this other post at unix.stackexchange: How to check if a shell is login/interactive/batch.

So the code for the solution was:

if [[ $- == *i* ]]; then
  fgRed=$(tput setaf 1)     ; fgGreen=$(tput setaf 2)  ; fgBlue=$(tput setaf 4)
  fgMagenta=$(tput setaf 5) ; fgYellow=$(tput setaf 3) ; fgCyan=$(tput setaf 6)
  fgWhite=$(tput setaf 7)   ; fgBlack=$(tput setaf 0)
  bgRed=$(tput setab 1)     ; bgGreen=$(tput setab 2)  ; bgBlue=$(tput setab 4)
  bgMagenta=$(tput setab 5) ; bgYellow=$(tput setab 3) ; bgCyan=$(tput setab 6)
  bgWhite=$(tput setab 7)   ; bgBlack=$(tput setab 0)
fi

If you do this

if tty -s
then
    : # your tput commands
fi

It will fix your problem. Without the -s option tty will either display your tty or write "not a tty"

For me, adding

export TERM=xterm

to /etc/profile was the only thing that solved the problem. Actually, the error gave us a hint: No value for $TERM