Building custom kernel for UNR?

Greetings.

I have installed UNR via the image found here: http://oem-images.canonical.com/unr/unr-1.0.1.iso. I have it installed on a Intel Atom based mainboard and it is running fine.

root@atom:~# uname -a
Linux atom 2.6.24-19-lpia #1 SMP Mon Nov 3 15:25:26 UTC 2008 i686 GNU/Linux

I have done various trimming of things down so that it is only running things that I want. The last thing I wanted to optimize was the kernel. I want to strip it down to the bare minimum of things that I need and build the modules into the kernel

I retrieved the kernel source package from the repositories:

root@atom:~# dpkg -l | grep linux-source
ii linux-source 2.6.24.19.21 Linux kernel source with Ubuntu patches
ii linux-source-2.6.24 2.6.24-19.41netbook11 Linux kernel source for version 2.6.24 with

I noticed that on the base system there were additional drivers in the /lib/modules subdirectories that I can't find in the kernel configuration:

root@atom:~# ls /lib/modules/2.6.24-19-lpia/ubuntu/fs/
asfs gfs squashfs unionfs

When I do a "make menuconfig" in the unpacked kernel source directory, I can't find the options for the squashfs, etc. So, it would appear that the kernel package I have isn't the right one. Is there a patch that I need? Or is the kernel package sufficient?

I also noticed via an lsmod that squashfs and unionfs are loaded. Given that my installation is on an IDE disk, what does the UNR use these for? Can I build a kernel without using them or is this going to make things unusable?

So, here's what I want to do:
1. Build a minimum kernel that still has all the necessary modules available.
2. Ensure that I respect the filesystem setup that is currently in place.

Currently, I have built a kernel and have attempted to get it working. At the moment I am getting the familiar "VFS: Cannot open root-device ..." messages that basically state I don't have the right drivers built in to access the root filesystem (i.e. I assumed that the IDE drivers would be fine, but the base installation seems to detect my setup as a /dev/sda1 via the sd module rather than the /dev/hda1). I should be able to figure this part out.

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

Rodney Lott