The extended testsuite only works with uid=0. It contains of several subdirectories named "test/TEST-??-*", which are run one by one. To run the extended testsuite do the following: $ make all # Avoid the "sudo make" below building anything as root $ cd test $ sudo make clean check ... make[1]: Entering directory `/mnt/data/harald/git/systemd/test/TEST-01-BASIC' Making all in . Making all in po TEST: Basic systemd setup [OK] make[1]: Leaving directory `/mnt/data/harald/git/systemd/test/TEST-01-BASIC' ... If one of the tests fails, then $subdir/test.log contains the log file of the test. To debug a special testcase of the testsuite do: $ make all $ cd test/TEST-01-BASIC $ sudo make clean setup run QEMU ==== If you want to log in the testsuite virtual machine, you can specify additional kernel command line parameter with $KERNEL_APPEND. $ sudo make KERNEL_APPEND="systemd.unit=multi-user.target" clean setup run you can even skip the "clean" and "setup" if you want to run the machine again. $ sudo make KERNEL_APPEND="systemd.unit=multi-user.target" run You can specify a different kernel and initramfs with $KERNEL_BIN and $INITRD. (Fedora's or Debian's default kernel path and initramfs are used by default) $ sudo make KERNEL_BIN=/boot/vmlinuz-foo INITRD=/boot/initramfs-bar clean check A script will try to find your QEMU binary. If you want to specify a different one you can use $QEMU_BIN. $ sudo make QEMU_BIN=/path/to/qemu/qemu-kvm clean check