How to enable wireless in RHEL 6.0

How to enable wireless in RHEL 6.0

1. Firstly, we must find out what exactly wireless device we own, you can use lspci to list all devices,
# lspci

00:18.2 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 11h Processor DRAM Controller

00:18.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 11h Processor Miscellaneous Control

00:18.4 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 11h Processor Link Control

01:05.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc RS780M/RS780MN [Radeon HD 3200 Graphics]

02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Marvell Technology Group Ltd. 88E8042 PCI-E Fast Ethernet Controller (rev 10)

06:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4312 802.11b/g LP-PHY (rev 01)

Here is my wireless device information: Broadcom Corporation BCM4312 802.11b/g, then we can search the drivers in www.broadcom.com, and download the suitable drivers for your devices, the following is my devices drivers download links.

32bit: http://www.broadcom.com/docs/linux_sta/hybrid-portsrc_x86-32_v5.60.246.6.tar.gz
64bit: http://www.broadcom.com/docs/linux_sta/hybrid-portsrc_x86-64_v5.60.246.6.tar.gz
readme: http://www.broadcom.com/docs/linux_sta/README.txt
2. Compile the drivers
# tar xvf hybrid-portsrc_x86-64_v5.60.246.6.tar.gz
# ls

lib                Makefile        README.txt      src

# make
# ls

built-in.o  Makefile       Module.symvers  src    wl.ko.unsigned  wl.mod.o

lib         modules.order  README.txt      wl.ko  wl.mod.c        wl.o

When make completes, It will produce a wl.ko file in the top level directory. 
3. Find out what wireless driver are using now, and install the new driver
# lspci -k 

06:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4312 802.11b/g LP-PHY (rev 01)

Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Device 1508

Kernel driver in use: ssb

Kernel modules: ssb

# cp wl.ko /lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel/net/wireless/
# depmon
# modprove wl
# echo "blacklist ssb" >> /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf
# mkinitrd /boot/initrd-`uname -r`.img `uname -r`
# cat >> /boot/grub/grub.conf <

> title Red Hat Enterprise Linux (with wireless)
> root (hd0,6)
> kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.32-71.el6.x86_64 ro root=UUID=276d526c-8edb-4e6b-8c74-00b40d10544b rd_NO_LUKS rd_NO_LVM rd_NO_MD rd_NO_DM LANG=en_US.UTF-8 SYSFONT=latarcyrheb-sun16 KEYBOARDTYPE=pc KEYTABLE=us crashkernel=auto rhgb quiet
> initrd /initrd-2.6.32-71.el6.x86_64.img
> EOF

# reboot 

reboot and use the correct grub entry to boot the kernel use new initrd image.