This is about getting wireless networking configured on a Lenovo ThinkPad P70 Mobile Workstation for Oracle Linux 7. I'm going to add much more detail to this page, but for now this is just a summary of how I got wireless for my UEK3 kernel on the P70.
Oracle Linux 7 downloaded install media provides the UEK3 kernel and the Oracle Linux Red Hat Compatible Kernel. For the P70 and the UEK3 kernel even wired networking did not work out-of-the-box. I have a blog post here for fixing that problem which is relatively easy and quick to implement which provides wired networking for Oracle Linux UEK3 kernel on the Lenovo P70.
Recently as of this post, the Oracle Linux UEK4 kernel was released and it can be installed with some easy updates to the /etc/yum.repos.d/public-yum-ol7.repo file very easily as described here. (Note that what that post does not mention is that to get UEK4 you will also need to run a "yum update" of course after you update the repo file mentioned here for the benefit of linux newbies:)
Once the Oracle Linux UEK4 kernel is installed, wireless networking for the UEK4 kernel using the onboard Intel 8260 wireless can be setup fairly easily as described here using a backport method as described here. Wireless networking for UEK3 however is a sticky wicket compared to UEK4 which was relatively speaking a breeze compared to UEK3. The main problem with UEK3 and use of the onboard Intel 8260 wireless seems to be that UEK3 kernel is a 3.8.x kernel and support for the Intel 8260 wireless was not introduced until 3.10+ kernels and so the backports won't work for UEK3. There are posts out there if you search that indicate that 3.10+ is required for the backport from 4.x to work, and also circumstantial evidence comes from the Oracle Linux Red Hat Compatible Kernel which of course comes with the Oracle Linux 7 distribution and that supports the Intel 8260 right out of the box, not even an backports needed, and that OL RHEL compatible kernel just so happens to be a 3.10+ kernel which fits the other evidence.
Therefore the next option was to try and configure a "stubby" usb wifi that would stay with the Lenovo P70 to provide wireless permanently for the UEK3 kernel. Of course another method to look into would be to see if the intel 8260 could by swapped out of the internal laptop wireless for an older that might be compatible with both kernels but frankly I don't want to open up the chassis for this particular issue, so I went with the usb wireless approach).
I tried a couple of different models (these are typically available for $5-$20 so they are not expensive relatively speaking). However, in testing the locally-available that I purchased failed (the point being that not all models will work for this kernel and this hardware).
The "IXCC CF-WU810N Wirless-N USB Adapter 150 Mbps" available from amazon.com turned out to work. The steps used to get it working were based on this blog here at Soft29. To get it working you may also need the custom driver (if you hit the problem of the wireless being recognized as a wired interface incorrectly) from github here. There's a good chance this will work on other similar 3.8 kernels from RedHat, CentOS, etc. but I haven't tested those and am not going to so YMMV and this solution is for Oracle Linux UEK 3.8 kernel only at this point.
Follow those instructions at Soft29 and it should work. The drawback is that for UEK3 kernel only, this breaks NetworkManager so for the UEK3 kernel it's necessary to manage the interfaces manually. To be clear:
(1) Network Manager not affected for other kernels provided that wireless usb is configured manually each time UEK3 (easy 1-liner procedure)
(2) If you remove the USB wifi then the NetworkManager will work fine even in the UEK3 kernel with no problems.
However, if you try to configure the onboot of the USB wifi for the UEK3 kernel using the wpa_supplicant.conf file as described at Soft29 blog, it will have side-effects on your UEK4 kernel NetworkManager that are undesirable, so I recommend keeping the USB wireless configuration on the UEK3 a manual process since it's so easy anyway. f you connect wired on the UEK3, that will configure automatically at boot with these caveats:
(1) If the USB wifi is plugged into USB, then the wired connectionwill auto-configure and get an IP but will not be listed in (broken) NetworkManger
(2) If you unplug the USB, wifi then the wired connection will auto-configure and get an IP and will be managed by (working fine) NetworkManager
I'll be adding more information to this blogpost to list out all the steps and configurations I had to use for the Oracle Linux UEK3 kernel.
I also read in several posts that the EDIMAX EW-7811un usb wifi designed for Raspberry Pi will work with these flavors of linux kernels such as Oracle Linux UEK3 and similar 3.8 kernels out-of-the-box with no special configurations needed so I have ordered one and will provide an update on how this works since I would prefer a solution that doesn't break Network Manager for the UEK3 kernel and which plays nice with the NetworkManager in all the kernels.