19.10: cache is empty. You need to run "apt-file update" first.

[cosine]

In 19.10 apt-file does not work anymore.
In 19.04 it did.

sudo apt-file find default.pa
reports:
Finding relevant cache files to search ...E: The cache is empty. You need to run "apt-file update" first.

sudo apt-file update
does not fix it.

It might be that no contents files are installed.

Also the configuration file seems to have moved.
This
 ln -sf /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/50apt-file.conf /etc/apt/apt-file.conf
fixes it, but does not fix the above problem.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Adam Conrad (adconrad)]

Just tested here on eoan and focal, and 'apt-file update' and 'apt-file find' work as expected on both. Might need a bit more information here. There are mentions of conffiles moving/changing. Are you trying to use an old config with a new apt-file?

[Dan Watkins (oddbloke)]

I just did a purge of apt-file and reinstalled (on eoan), and I'm still seeing the same issue. (The config file installed was identical to the one from before the purge.)

[Adam Conrad (adconrad)]

This should be fixed on primary mirrors ({us,gb}.{ports,archive}.ubuntu.com) as of right around now, and should propagate to non-Canonical mirrors over the next few hours.

We'll leave my inability to initially reproduce it as an argument between me and my laptop.

[Akkana Peck (akkzilla)]

Thanks! I was hit by this bug too (I filed 1849587, marked as a dup) and can report that after an update, apt-file is now working again.

[Benjamin Schmid (benbuntu)]

Coming from #1850616 and glad to see that the upstream Contents-amd64.gz at http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/eoan/ are no longer empty and

    apt-file search /bin/bash

started working again. Thanks!