f15 power button stopped working

[Wolfgang S. Rupprecht]

I have two older AMD athlon machines that I use as headless servers for
backups etc.  For years this wasn't a problem.  Now, after the
F15/64-bit (clean) install the power buttons stopped working.  Surely
I'm not expected to lug a monitor and keyboard over to the servers just
so I can click the on-screen power-off widget.

What do I need to lobotomize to get a power button that works as a power
button? All that happens now is it puts the servers into a state that
blinks the front pannel power led.  I assume it is doing some sort of
sleep-to-ram instead of powering down.  I can see that the logged in
user can elect what the power button does during the time they are
logged in.   Where does the system-wide default come from?

-wolfgang