Does lsmod show the module being loaded and/or do your kernel logs/dmesg show the hardware device being recognized? 

On 16 Nov 2011, at 1402, Yasha Karant wrote:

> I have just attempted to migrate my laptop to SL 6.1 from EL 5.7, but IA-32 (not X86-64) .  Under 5.7, all of the hardware works, and the migration was an attempt to (1) keep consistency amongst the environments/machines I support and (2) to get more recent libraries than 5.7 provides to enable applications that require these more recent libraries, applications that are licensed for fee (in some cases) and that do not provide source.
> 
> Under 6.1, the machine boots, but the Intel 5300 802.11 WNIC is not being recognized.  Initially, during the boot sequence, there was a complaint about the firmware version.   I manually installed (rpm -Uhv from a copy on a USB flash drive that I copied to the internal hard drive of the machine)
> iwl5000-firmware-8.83.5.1_1-1.el6_1.1.noarch.rpm
> that stopped the firmware complaints (previously, v2, now v5) but the WNIC still is not recognized (wlan0 not found and thus not being activated).
> 
> I manually installed the rpm, not yum install, because I would have needed to get the network activated for yum, and this would have required running a UTP 802.3 cable to a 802.3 UTP port -- not physically convenient.
> 
> Is this a kernel driver issue?  Does one need to use a later kernel (e.g., as provided by elrepo)?  If so, without using yum but using a manual rpm, which rpm kernel and/or system firmware files do I need to install to get a bootable system?
> 
> Any suggestions?
> 
> Yasha Karant