Very often, it is helpful to issue commands directly on the minion without involving the master, or at least minimizing communication with the master. The salt-call command can be used with or without the local mode:

# salt-call test.ping
# salt-call --local test.ping

The difference between these two commands is that the first will still contact the master to ask for data such as pillar data, files from the master file server (if needed), and so on. The second will tell the minion to behave as if it has no master, and look for that information locally. If data has been set up in file_roots or pillar_roots directly on the minion, it will be used instead of contacting the master:

# salt-call mytest.badcode 
[ERROR   ] An un-handled exception was caught by salt's global exception handler: 
NameError: global name 'die' is not defined 
Traceback (most recent call last): 
  File "/usr/bin/salt-call", line 11, in <module> 
    salt_call() ...