Comment 4 for bug 179899

This still has nothing to do with mirrors. All mirrors of a repository has Contents files if the repository has generated them. If the repository does not have Contents files, no mirror will have them.

What you are trying to say is that some repositories don't have Contents files generated, and that a) it would be nice if they were generated and b) apt-file should handle that more gracefully than throwing 404's in the face of the user.

If there is any mirror actually removing files from the repository, they should be removed from the list of official mirrors. I've yet to hear of this happening anywhere though.