Just had a problem with a failing Windows Update on a Windows 2008 R2 Server “Windows Update Error: 8024402F”

On further investigation found that dansguardian was denying the connection to the cab file because the word “babe” was in the URL:

# the following was all on one line
# but I have wrapped it for readability
2011.7.18 12:03:11 - 210.211.212.50 \
http://download.windowsupdate.com/msdownload \
/update/software/dflt/2011/06/ \
4421586_babe723469a268d14ad0da8eb86556e8303c323b.cab \
*DENIED* Banned Regular Expression \
URL: <Regular Expression Was Here and I Truncated it \
for readability and because there were naughty words in it> \
GET 0 0 Banned Regular Expression URLs 1 403 -   -

Solution:

# open the dansguardian exception site list
vi /etc/dansguardian/lists/exceptionsitelist

# add the domain to the exception list
download.windowsupdate.com
windowsupdate.com

# save the file

# reload dansguardian
/etc/init.d/dansguardian reload