I've a vendor-supplied Linux/arm kernel image burned into onboard NAND flash. However it seems that it's a very scaled down Linux with min. bin commands. Common commands like 'make' is unavailable. So do I need to recompile a new Linux kernel or a new filesystem? Are the binary files built when compiling the filesystem (e.g. yaffs2) or the Linux image? 
when are the linux bin files built?
filesystems;compiling