potato problem upgrading

[Ron Farrer <rbf@farrer.net>]

Hey all;

For the last few months every time I try to run a 'apt-get -f
dist-upgrade' it wants to remove some packages I DO NOT want it to
remove:

root@mustang:~# apt-get -f dist-upgrade
Reading Package Lists... Done
Building Dependency Tree... Done
Calculating Upgrade... Done
The following packages will be REMOVED:
  gconv-modules libc6.1-bin ppp-pam wmaker wmaker-gnome wmaker-plain 
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  eject libace5.0 libgimp1.1.17 libgsm1 
The following packages have been kept back
  eterm kbd 
351 packages upgraded, 4 newly installed, 6 to remove and 2 not
upgraded.
Need to get 209MB of archives. After unpacking 30.7MB will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] n
Abort.

An 'apt-get -f upgrade' wants to do similar things, but also claims a
bunch of stuff has been held back (which is fine). I'll include it:  

root@mustang:~# apt-get -f upgrade
Reading Package Lists... Done
Building Dependency Tree... Done
The following packages have been kept back
  apache apache-common apache-dev eterm gmc gnome-bin gnome-chess
  gnome-control-center gnotes gnucash ivtools-bin ivtools-unidraw kbd
libc6.1
  libc6.1-dev libcapplet0 libdb2 libdb2-util libgnome32 libgnomesupport0
  libgnomeui32 libgnorba27 libgnorbagtk0 libpam-modules libzvt2 login
man-db mc
  mc-common passwd perl-5.005 perl-5.005-base php3 ppp python-base
python-dev
  python-examples python-tk python-zlib sane sox wmaker 
312 packages upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 42 not
upgraded.
Need to get 182MB of archives. After unpacking 29.3MB will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] n
Abort.


Now maybe I fell asleep and missed something, but I don't think
libc6.1-bin should be removed? Also, the windowmaker packages are ones
*I* built (from deb sources), not ones apt installed (although it did
fetch them 'apt-get source').


TIA,

Ron