Any news? It is still the case. I suspect that what happens here is - zypper was changed to print a warning when repositories refresh attempt fails: * Fri May 03 2024 ma@suse.de - Fixed check for outdated repo metadata as non-root user (bsc#1222086) - at the same time libzypp was modified to not return an error when trying to refresh repositories as non-root: * Fri May 03 2024 ma@suse.de - Fixed check for outdated repo metadata as non-root user (bsc#1222086) In any case - the behavior is clearly suboptimal. Why should zypper waste time downloading the full metadata that will be thrown away immediately? For the purpose of non-root warning it is really enough to just compare the basic file properties (name, size, timestamp) that could be retrieved from server quickly without downloading the file content. So, here is what happens. As you see, repositories were last refreshed two days ago and zypper diligently downloads them for no purpose but still is silent about them being outdated. bor@tw:~> date Sat Jul 13 08:13:42 AM MSK 2024 bor@tw:~> ll /var/cache/zypp/raw/ total 0 drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 58 Jul 7 19:57 openSUSE-20221216-0 drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 58 Jan 13 20:44 repo-debug drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 58 Jul 7 19:58 repo-non-oss drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 44 Jul 2 14:30 repo-update drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 44 Jul 11 21:20 vdagent bor@tw:~> zypper -vvvv search xxxxxxxx Verbosity: 3 Non-option program arguments: 'xxxxxxxx' Initializing Target Retrieving: http://download.opensuse.org/history/20240711/tumbleweed/repo/oss/repodata/repomd.xml ......................[done] Retrieving: http://download.opensuse.org/history/20240711/tumbleweed/repo/oss/media.1/media ...................[done (93 B/s)] Retrieving: http://download.opensuse.org/history/20240711/tumbleweed/repo/oss/repodata/repomd.xml.asc ........[done (827 B/s)] Retrieving: http://download.opensuse.org/history/20240711/tumbleweed/repo/oss/repodata/repomd.xml.key ......[done (1.6 KiB/s)] Retrieving: http://download.opensuse.org/history/20240711/tumbleweed/repo/oss/repodata/repomd.xml ......................[done] Repository: openSUSE-20221216-0 (20240711) Key Fingerprint: AD48 5664 E901 B867 051A B15F 35A2 F86E 29B7 00A4 Key Name: openSUSE Project Signing Key <opensuse@opensuse.org> Key Algorithm: RSA 4096 Key Created: Mon 20 Jun 2022 05:03:14 PM MSK Key Expires: Fri 19 Jun 2026 05:03:14 PM MSK Rpm Name: gpg-pubkey-29b700a4-62b07e22 Retrieving: http://download.opensuse.org/history/20240711/tumbleweed/repo/oss/repodata/e227648a1dd04fc201a46[done (3.9 MiB/s)] Retrieving: http://download.opensuse.org/history/20240711/tumbleweed/repo/oss/repodata/126913f8b577391c1c965[done (2.4 MiB/s)] Retrieving: http://download.opensuse.org/history/20240711/tumbleweed/repo/oss/repodata/06a00321035620d2e2b84d1[done (968 B/s)] Retrieving: http://download.opensuse.org/history/20240711/tumbleweed/repo/oss/repodata/a370726b4d3e2a8f2d8ca[done (7.6 MiB/s)] Retrieving: http://download.opensuse.org/history/20240711/tumbleweed/repo/oss/repodata/5c8d9b3cdf4bbff6bfb2e[done (3.8 MiB/s)] Retrieving: http://download.opensuse.org/history/20240711/tumbleweed/repo/non-oss/repodata/repomd.xml ..................[done] Retrieving: http://download.opensuse.org/history/20240711/tumbleweed/repo/non-oss/media.1/media ..............[done (109 B/s)] Retrieving: http://download.opensuse.org/history/20240711/tumbleweed/repo/non-oss/repodata/repomd.xml.asc ....[done (827 B/s)] Retrieving: http://download.opensuse.org/history/20240711/tumbleweed/repo/non-oss/repodata/repomd.xml.key ..[done (1.6 KiB/s)] Retrieving: http://download.opensuse.org/history/20240711/tumbleweed/repo/non-oss/repodata/repomd.xml ..................[done] Repository: openSUSE-Tumbleweed-Non-Oss (20240711) Key Fingerprint: AD48 5664 E901 B867 051A B15F 35A2 F86E 29B7 00A4 Key Name: openSUSE Project Signing Key <opensuse@opensuse.org> Key Algorithm: RSA 4096 Key Created: Mon 20 Jun 2022 05:03:14 PM MSK Key Expires: Fri 19 Jun 2026 05:03:14 PM MSK Rpm Name: gpg-pubkey-29b700a4-62b07e22 Retrieving: http://download.opensuse.org/history/20240711/tumbleweed/repo/non-oss/repodata/c912481834962c1bcff6b5df4fc17[done] Retrieving: http://download.opensuse.org/history/20240711/tumbleweed/repo/non-oss/repodata/24edaf5f1096d1f69[done (3.5 KiB/s)] Retrieving: http://download.opensuse.org/history/20240711/tumbleweed/repo/non-oss/repodata/ae00757db7d3b924c[done (4.3 KiB/s)] Retrieving: http://download.opensuse.org/history/20240711/tumbleweed/repo/non-oss/repodata/e57298472a1716cb1[done (1.2 KiB/s)] Retrieving: http://download.opensuse.org/update/tumbleweed/repodata/repomd.xml .........................................[done] Loading repository data... Reading installed packages... No matching items found. bor@tw:~>