R SIG Debian - Sep 2017 - Upgrade to 3.4.2 fails due to r-api version conflict

Upgrade of r-base to 3.4.2 on Ubuntu 16.04 using the marutter/rrutter PPA
terribly failed on my server. One way to reproduce the problem is using the
stable opencpu image which currently ships with R 3.4.1:

   docker run -i -t opencpu/base /bin/bash

This image is currently stable. Now add the rrutter ppa and upgrade:

   add-apt-repository ppa:marutter/rrutter
   apt-get update
   apt-get upgrade

Note that if we try apt-get install r-base or r-base-recommended we get:

   Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.

Unfortunately what I did was 'apt-get dist-upgrade -y' which uninstalled
most of the system in order to upgrade r-base-core. That left me here:
https://twitter.com/opencpu/status/913714052542746624

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