Can grub access another partition?
 

I'm running Slackware with /boot on a separate partition. I want to try Debian. How would I get grub to access the /boot partition or lilo for that matter. Or would it be easier in all to share the /boot partition

What is your existing setup?

LILO in the MBR, booting kernel(s) from the partition normally mounted as /boot?

If so, the most self-contained option (especially as you are only trying Debian) might be to install Debian's GRUB in the boot sector of Debian's root file system and chainload it from the existing LILO.

Alternatively you could migrate to GRUB in the MBR and on the partition normally mounted as /boot. If you then decided against Debian it would be hard to maintain GRUB if your Slackware is 64 bit.

LILO is in the MBR. Does Debian use grub2 because i can't use grub-legacy? My slackware is 32 bit :( . How do you chainload?

I'd prefer if I only use LILO and everything is in one place but I'll use grub2 as grub-legacy doesn't seem to support GPT

I think this will allow you to chainload if gub2 is installed to debians partition.
To boot debian from lilo the under slackware mount the debian partition somewhere, lets say /mnt. Then your lilo.conf for debian would look something like this:

Thanks I'm installing debian now I'll tell you if it works.

When running "lilo" I get Warning: Device 0x0800: Inconsistent partition table, 4th entry
chs adress in PT: 0:0;0 --> LBA (-1)
lba adress in PT: 0 --> CHS (0:0:1)
Fatal: Either FIX-Table or Ignore-Table most be specified
but when running -P ignore i still get the same error.
ANd when trying directly it can't find the initrd.

I fixed a path now I get Fatal: Parition entry not found for other ...

Nevermind I set the path to /mnt instead of /mnt/boot it should work
YES IT DOES. Thanks for the help everyone