simple question, I'm editing my grub to include a distro installed on hda5, so what should the first line [i.e.- root(hdx,x)] be?

my hda1 uses (hd0, 0)

so hd5 should use hd?,?

root (hd0,4)

nice. thanks for the reply 320mb!

It depends on how your drive is partitioned. It is my understanding that grub works on recognized partitions starting from 0.
So if your drive is partitioned.
/dev/hda1 - hd0,0
/dev/hda4 - hd0,1
....

First, the partition number (the 5 in hda5) is always 1 less than the linux number. So it is 4 in this case.

Second, grub scans through hda-hdf in sequence, assigning a drive number if and only if a drive is detected. So if for example you have a hd on hda and hdf and not on any other positions hda=(hd0) and hdf=(hd1).

Finally, an entry in menu.lst/grub.conf like this:

root(hd0,0)

refers to the partition on which menu.lst, grub.conf, the stage files etc. which you are using reside. This is grubs root, _not_ the filesystem root (/). It is distinct from the root=hd?? on the kernel line. root(hd?,?) is optitional by the way. That info is encoded in the mbr when you install grub. It is usefull to have as a reminder of which menu.lst/grub.conf to edit when booting multiple linux installations. Many distro's will install with it commented out:

#root(hd0,0)

I stand corrected.

Confused the heck out of me at first, too.

Forgot to mention, only hd's count, other ide devices (ie cdrom's) are done seperately in a similar fashion, as are floppies (fd0), scsi drives (sd0) and so on.

It's important to remember which root(hd?,?) you're using and this can change when installing multiple linux system's. I prefer to use the grub prompt to set this manually to the /boot/grub I want to use, as grub-install seems to be a little unpredictable, at least for me.