When using the FTP install procedure, the installer is able to autodetect the NIC (tulip for me) and get to the point where it is ready to accept a FTP site name and directory for installation. After typing in the (correct) information, it fails. The <alt>-f3 screen shows that it is trying to transfer: ftp://(null)/mirror/redhat-6.1/RedHat/base/stage2.img The NIC itself is an old SMC card which I've had working with RH4.2. When
I ran into the same problem and it turned out to be either the DNS for my ISP was not returing a valid address or the site was down. I tried another site that manually accepted FTPs and it worked correctly.