libc6 (?) related conflicts involving emacs21 and other packages

[Charles Blair <c-blair@uiuc.edu>]

   This is an attempt to supply more detail on a problem reported in
another recent post.

    I have installed a dual-boot of etch and Windows XP on a recently
purchased HP machine that has a SATA hard disk (i386).

     Recently I have installed gcc-4.1 and emacs-21 using downloads
of the "weekly build" iso images.  These seem to be working.

    I asked aptitude to install gnumeric and got messages:

***  packages to be downgraded:

     libc6        2.3.6.ds1-2.3.6.ds1-i
     libc6-amd64     (same thing)
     libc6-dev

     packages being deleted due to unsatisfied dependencies

     emacs 21     21.4a+1-3

     packages to be removed

     grub   0.97-23

*** (end of aptitude messages)

   This alarming response led me to exit from aptitude without
trying the install.  I agree with a previous respondent that
this is probably not a problem with gnumeric, since I got very
similar messages when I asked about installing octave and also
gnuchess.

   Thanks for any ideas about how to deal with this situation.