Solaris

I've successfully installed syslog-ng and chkconfig using the packages from the OpenCSW project, these packages install under /opt/csw. I now need to disable the default syslog daemon and enable the new service created by the OpenCSW package (/etc/init.d/cswsyslog_ng).

Is there any good way to do this or do I have to manually delete and create symlinks under each /etc/rcX.d directory?

(The chkconfig program doesn't seem able to function, even when I point it at the /etc/init.d and /etc or /etc/rc0.d directories.)

It is a manual process in Solaris versions older than 10. In this case you should rename the start script like this
mv /etc/rcX.d/SXXsyslogd /etc/rcX.d/_SXXsyslogd
and do the same for the kill script KXXsyslogd => _KXXsyslogd

Thanks, done that now although can't tell if it'll work or not as we can't reboot this machine yet (it's on 10-year old hardware so no one's sure if it'll come up again!)

Still I have to wonder how do people manage Solaris 8 and 9, such simple things seem to be huge pains in the arse

Well, you can always write your own scripts to automate simple tasks like that... I know I used to have one for disabling/enabling services.