I have been working on fine-tuning a kernel for a laptop I am using as a Gentoo server.

I am wondering if I could use the kernel's module autoloader to help me configure drivers.

Would it be possible to select a bunch of drivers to be loaded as modules (being careful with disk drivers and those needed to load modules) and inspect the loaded modules to find the drivers I need?

In other words, here is my plan:
1) Select every driver as a module, except what I know I need for disk access.
2) Install kernel (hardened-gentoo) and reboot.
3) Use lsmod to read off loaded modules.
4) Re-configure kernel to build in running modules, and turn off the rest.

Would this work?

Thank you for any help.

Yes it will work. Remember to keep a rescue kernel around when your latest
test kernel doesn't boot.

This is what most hardware companies do to optimize the Linux boot sequence.

Thank you, I'm glad to hear this. I already have a rescue kernel set up (plus a Knoppix disk as a second back-up, but that's a pain to use (10-minute boot time.))