How to fix “The name org.freedesktop.Hal was not provided by any .service files”

Problem:

You want to use the pmi tool from the powermanagement-interface package, e.g. to standby your Linux computer using the command line, but you get an error message like this:

Error org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.ServiceUnknown: The name org.freedesktop.Hal was not provided by any .service files

Solution

PMI requires the hardware abstraction layer (HAL) library in order to use ACPI services.

Install the hal package, e.g. by using

sudo apt-get install hal

This solution might also apply to other tools beyond pmi that yield the same error message.