It seems you are running a mix of different versions of Debian? In Sarge: cpp 4:3.3.5-3 depends on cpp-3.3 (>= 1:3.3.5-1) cpp-3.3 1:3.3.5-13 depends on gcc-3.3-base (>= 1:3.3.5-13, << 1:3.3.6) gcc-3.3-base 1:3.3.5-13 satisifies the dependency. So the question boils down to: why do you have gcc-3.3-base (=3.3.6-5) installed? -- Ludovic Brenta.