apt-get and "kept back" packages

[Dale Scheetz <dwarf@polaris.net>]

While trying to figure out why man doesn't work on my machine I did
another "upgrade" from potato using apt-get. Before this program gets down
to the meat of downloading and installing packages, it gives a substantial
list of packages that it says "have been kept back". There are many
important packages on this list, including man-db (which seems to be why
man refuses to find any manpages on my system).

A check with dpkg -s mandb shows that the old named file is installed. 
apt-get seems to know about the new file (man-db), as it declares it by
name, but seems unwilling to install it, replacing the older mandb
package. This is supposed to be handled properly using replaces,
conflicts, and provides, so why is apt-get choking? What happened to our
"seamless" upgrade process?

Is there any "automatic" way to get these issues resolved? Why is apt-get
unable to resolve this issue?

At this point I must investigate all 25 files individually and figure out
what to do about them, one at a time. Is there a better way to deal with
this weak behavior?

Waiting is,

Dwarf
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