Hello,
I have a Redhat 9.0 with kernel-2.4.20-20.9 and I am trying to up2date it. I dont use up2date itself since my line is slow and I get pretty much gpg errors. So what I did is to downlaod manually all the rpms for which hdr files were downloaded by the unsuccessful up2date tries.

I know I have to ge up2date to work but for this time I want to try this way. I will install all the rpms manuelly. They are all fine except kernel-2.4.20-27.9.i686.rpm and kernel-2.4.20-24.9.i686.rpm and related packages. I guess it is not rpm -Uvh with these, it m,ight take some carefull steps.

What procedure should I follow to upgrade the kernel by using these rpms?

Have a nice day.

You don't UPGRADE your kernel package, you install it new. Otherwise, you will break things. After you have installed the new kernel, then reboot into the new kernel ... then you can rpm --erase your previous kernel files.

Thank you for clearing out that, but actually is there anything else to do other than rpm -ivh new-kernel.rpm and reboot?

Check to make sure that the rpm --install actually updated your grub and/or lilo configuration. If you use either - you should double-check to make sure that the boot info was actually updated (otherwise you won't boot to a new kernel at all).