Occasionally, and particularly if you are following the unstable release, some packages are broken for various reasons. This was the case with the package cdrecord in unstable. This package was compiled with kernel 2.4.n and had some kernel specific issues that were done differently with kernel 2.2.n. At compile time one or the other options was chosen (but not both!). Thus the newer binary versions of cdrecord would not run on a system using kernel 2.2.n. One solution is to build a Debian package of cdrecord using the wajig build command. Another is to reinstall an older version that worked and then place the package on hold with:
$ wajig hold cdrecord
A wajig upgrade would not try to upgrade this package.