...

...

In the mean time, you can still hibernate or suspend your computer by

>>> entering "powersave" or "powersave -U" on the commandline.  >>>  >>  >> HAL has nothing to do with suspend and hibernate.  >>  >  > That's why I'm saying that you can still suspend or hibernate through the  > command line (i.e., without kpowersave).  >

There is an entry in the menu to end the session, suspend and hibernate. It  does not use kpowersave.  Do you have "end session" in the K-Menu?    If you do not, this may indicate that you use some session meanager other  than kdm3. Check  http://en.opensuse.org/KDE3 to see how to enable kdm3.