you probably forgot support for your filesystem. At a minimum ext2 and ext3 need to be compiled into the kernel (not modules). Here is the filesystem section from my 2.6.24 kernel .config file.
#
# File systems
#
CONFIG_EXT2_FS=y
# CONFIG_EXT2_FS_XATTR is not set
# CONFIG_EXT2_FS_XIP is not set
CONFIG_EXT3_FS=y
CONFIG_EXT3_FS_XATTR=y
CONFIG_EXT3_FS_POSIX_ACL=y
CONFIG_EXT3_FS_SECURITY=y
# CONFIG_EXT4DEV_FS is not set


