Bug#866697: E: Couldn't download dists/stable/main/binary-amd64/Packages

[frose@kit.materials.duke.edu]

Package: debootstrap
Version: 1.0.89
Severity: important

Dear Maintainer,

   * What led up to the situation?
   running the command line (\n inserted for clarity)
    debootstrap --include \n
    initramfs-tools,aufs-tools,linux-image-amd64,busybox-static,locales \n
    --arch amd64 stable /mnt/NFSRats/cs400/2017-Jun-30B.nfs-img \n
    http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian
   * What exactly did you do (or not do) that was effective (or
     ineffective)? 
     Looking at the distributions mirrors shows only Packages.gz and
     Packages.xz
   * What was the outcome of this action? Found no uncompressed packages
   files
   * What outcome did you expect instead? debootstrap to try retrieving
   Packages.gz 

Generated from non-routable machine address, please reply to
fmr6@duke.edu

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 9.0
  APT prefers stable-updates
  APT policy: (500, 'stable-updates'), (500, 'stable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 4.9.0-3-amd64 (SMP w/24 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)

Versions of packages debootstrap depends on:
ii  wget  1.18-5

Versions of packages debootstrap recommends:
ii  debian-archive-keyring  2017.5
ii  gnupg                   2.1.18-6

debootstrap suggests no packages.

-- no debconf information