apt wants to remove kernel

["Vikas Rawal" <vikas@mail.jnu.ac.in>]

I am trying to install a package using apt (r-base) but among the packages apt would like to remove in the process includes the kernel image!! I have tried installing other packages also (emacs and ess), but I get the same message.

My sources.list and an illustrative output of apt-get is reproduced below for reference.

Can somebody help. I will be happy to provide any other information that you might need to crack this.

Vikas


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Sources.list

deb http://ftp.iitm.ac.in/debian/ testing main

deb http://security.debian.org/ testing/updates main
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The output of "apt-get install r-base" is as follows.


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Output of "apt-get install r-base"

Reading Package Lists... Done
Building Dependency Tree... Done
The following extra packages will be installed:
  atlas3-base binutils cpp-3.4 e2fslibs e2fsprogs g++-3.4 gcc-3.4 gcc-3.4-base  gcc-4.0-base initscripts libc6 libc6-dev libg2c0 libgcc1 libpng12-0
  libreadline5 libstdc++6 libstdc++6-dev locales r-base-core r-cran-boot
  r-cran-cluster r-cran-foreign r-cran-kernsmooth r-cran-lattice r-cran-mgcv
  r-cran-nlme r-cran-rpart r-cran-survival r-cran-vr r-recommended tk8.4
  zlib-bin
Suggested packages:
  atlas3-3dnow atlas3-sse atlas3-sse2 refblas3 lapack3 binutils-doc gpart
  parted e2fsck-static gcc-3.4-doc amd64-libs-dev glibc-doc libstdc++6-doc
  stl-manual ess r-doc-info r-doc-pdf r-doc-html libpaper-utils r-mathlib
Recommended packages:
  r-base-html r-base-latex r-base-dev xterm x-terminal-emulator
The following packages will be REMOVED:
  initrd-tools kernel-image-2.6.8-1-386
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  atlas3-base gcc-4.0-base libg2c0 libreadline5 r-base r-base-core r-cran-boot  r-cran-cluster r-cran-foreign r-cran-kernsmooth r-cran-lattice r-cran-mgcv
  r-cran-nlme r-cran-rpart r-cran-survival r-cran-vr r-recommended tk8.4
  zlib-bin
The following packages will be upgraded:
  binutils cpp-3.4 e2fslibs e2fsprogs g++-3.4 gcc-3.4 gcc-3.4-base initscripts  libc6 libc6-dev libgcc1 libpng12-0 libstdc++6 libstdc++6-dev locales
15 upgraded, 19 newly installed, 2 to remove and 784 not upgraded.
Need to get 40.7MB of archives.
After unpacking 23.6MB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] n
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