pirut update error: "error was [Errno 14] HTTP Error 404: Not Found"

Issue

• When attempting to run the Package Updater application, an unhandled exception is encountered:

  Component: pirut
  Summary: TB5b7b33e4 rhnplugin.py:305:_getFile:RepoError: failed to retrieve repodata/updateinfo.xml.gz from rhel-x86_64-server-5
  error was [Errno 14] HTTP Error 404: Not Found
  
  Traceback (most recent call last):
    File "/usr/sbin/pup", line 617, in ?
      main()
    File "/usr/sbin/pup", line 613, in main
      pup.run()
    File "/usr/sbin/pup", line 451, in run
      self.doRefresh()
    File "/usr/sbin/pup", line 291, in doRefresh
      self.populateUpdates()
    File "/usr/sbin/pup", line 347, in populateUpdates
      self.updateMetadata.add(repo)
    File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/yum/update_md.py", line 310, in add
      md = obj.retrieveMD(mdtype)
    File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/yum/yumRepo.py", line 1216, in retrieveMD
      return self._retrieveMD(mdtype)
    File "/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/yum/yumRepo.py", line 1254, in _retrieveMD
      cache=self.http_caching == 'all')
    File "/usr/lib/yum-plugins/rhnplugin.py", line 305, in _getFile
      raise yum.Errors.RepoError, \
  RepoError: failed to retrieve repodata/updateinfo.xml.gz from rhel-x86_64-server-5
  error was [Errno 14] HTTP Error 404: Not Found
  
  Local variables in innermost frame:
  e: [Errno 14] HTTP Error 404: Not Found
  url: None
  text: None
  self: rhel-x86_64-server-5
  cache: False
  reget: None
  relative: repodata/updateinfo.xml.gz
  start: None
  checkfunc: (<bound method RhnRepo.checkMD of <rhnplugin.RhnRepo object at 0x2c10dd0>>, ('updateinfo',), {})
  copy_local: 1
  end: None
  local: //var/cache/yum/rhel-x86_64-server-5/updateinfo.xml.gz