Have just upgrade redhat kernel to 2.4.20-20.9 and I tried running the patch-o-matic to get string match to iptables.

While running through all the patch-o-matic updates i noticed the ipt_REJECT-fake-source update patch and tried installing like so

#cd /usr/src/redhat/SOURCES/patch-o-matic-20030107
#KERNEL_DIR=/usr/src/linux-2.4 sh runme userspace/ipt_REJECT-fake-source.patch

it invokes the pom and when i hit 'y' or 'f' pom errors with failed to update /usr/src/linux

all other patches could be installed successfully except for this particular patch. Is there a step i missed???

If you're talking errors in the sense of rejects, can't you apply those manually? Post the errors?