re- installing R linux ubuntu: unmet dependencies R - r

Question

I used aptitude install to install a package, Ubuntu 11.10 oneiric, that apparently I couldn't install because of dependencies. I removed a couple of more libraries while doing it. I uninstalled Rstudio but still can't install R on my machine. I'm on ubuntu and this is what I get while running
sudo apt-get install r-base
The following packages have unmet dependencies:
r-base : Depends: r-base-core (>= 2.15.3-1quantal0) but it is not going to be installed
Depends: r-recommended (= 2.15.3-1quantal0) but it is not going to be installed
Recommends: r-base-html but it is not going to be installed
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.
any ideas how to start from scratch and get R running again?
More of the Error log:
The following packages have unmet dependencies r-base-core : Depends: libblas3 but it is not installable or libblas.so.3 but it is not installable or libatlas3-base but it is not installable Depends: libc6 (>= 2.15) but 2.13-20ubuntu5.3 is to be installed Depends: liblapack3 but it is not installable or liblapack.so.3 but it is not installable or libatlas3-base but it is not installable Depends: liblzma5 (>= 5.1.1alpha+20120614) but it is not installable –

Answer 1

Try this
If you have added a line from new ubuntu repository to /etc/apt/sources.list, erase the line.
Then, run the commands
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:marutter/rrutter
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
It worked for me, the answer comes from here
http://r.789695.n4.nabble.com/Upgrading-on-Ubuntu-from-2-11-1-to-2-15-1-td4636965.html

Answer 2

Uninstall previous R installation:
sudo R --no-save
pkgList <- installed.packages(priority='NA')
remove.packages(pkgList)
q()
sudo apt-get remove --purge r-cran* r-base*
Follow instructions (for R part) from:
How to install R, JGR and Deducer in Ubuntu

Answer 3

To list what you installed with aptitude type the following
xyz#sxyzcom~$ sudo apt-get remove
This should list what remains of your R install and possibly anything else missing dependencies Then you can run
xyz#sxyzcom~$ sudo apt-get autoremove
and that should get you back to square one.

Answer 4

If you are facing problems regarding Broken packages then first of all remove that package by first checking dependencies and then forcefully remove that package, and don't ever forget to reboot when you do make enormous changes in your system. To remove that package use these shell commands
$ sudo su
Then Enter your password
# apt-cache rdepends package-name
# apt-get --purge remove --force package-name
Use these shell commands
# apt-get clean
# apt-get autoclean
# apt-get update
# apt-get upgrade
# apt-get dist-upgrade
# reboot
This worked for me, Try this, I believe this will fix all your problems, Good luck.

Answer 5

If you want to remove the package forcefully,you can do
sudo dpkg --remove --force-remove-reinstreq package_name
and then
sudo apt-get update