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