re- installing R linux ubuntu: unmet dependencies 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

1. 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*
   

2. Follow instructions (for R part) from: How to install R, JGR and Deducer in Ubuntu

Answer 2

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