Satellite: Re-provisioning a RHEL6.3 system with a static network interface fails with 'cpio: premature end of archive' error

Issue

• I can schedule the kickstart from Satellite (profile -> Provisioning -> Kickstart -> Schedule), but when I run "rhn_check -vvv" on the client machine I get the following errors:

- looking for Cobbler at http://satellite.example.com/cobbler_api
- reading URL: http://satellite.example.com/cblr/svc/op/ks/system/rhel6.3:1
install_tree: http://192.168.1.1/ks/dist/ks-rhel-x86_64-server-6-6.3
downloading initrd initrd.img to /boot/initrd.img
url=http://satellite.example.com/cobbler/images/ks-rhel-x86_64-server-6-63/initrd.img
- reading URL: http://satellite.example.com/cobbler/images/ks-rhel-x86_64-server-6-63/initrd.img
downloading kernel vmlinuz to /boot/vmlinuz
url=http://satellite.example.com/cobbler/images/ks-rhel-x86_64-server-6-63/vmlinuz
- reading URL: http://satellite.example.com/cobbler/images/ks-rhel-x86_64-server-6-63/vmlinuz
- reading URL: http://satellite.example.com/cblr/svc/op/ks/system/rhel6.3:1
- ['/bin/bash', '/var/spool/koan/insert.sh']

gzip: /boot/initrd.img: not in gzip format
mount failed; treating initrd as a cpio archive...
cpio: premature end of archive
ln: creating hard link `tmp/ks.cfg' => `ks.cfg': No such file or directory
...