The tests are running the following way: 01compile.t ensures everything is valid perl 02create_pkgs.t builds the various RPMs needed by the others tests cfg.t tests reading/writing the config files pod.t check for POD errors in files (optional) superuser--*.t tests needing to be run as root The first tests just ensure that basic things in urpmi works. you need to be root to run superuser--*.t, with a normal user those tests are simply skipped. They actually test both urpmi, URPM _and_ *rpm* extensively. It had often found regressions in rpm itself that rpm's own testsuite didn't found. superuser--file-conflicts.t runs only some patches on Mageia due to having a downstream patch there superuser--mirrorlist.t will only be run on Mageia as it needs a specific patch that introduces Time::ZoneInfo->current_zone() Usage: ------ use "make testall" You can speed up things by using eatmydata which will prevent all the fsync() & fdatasync() calls in librpm: eatmydata make testall If you didn't alter the tests data, you can further speedup a re-run by using: [[ -d t/media ]] && mv -f t/02create_pkgs.t{,.i}