mbstring prob with phpMyAdmin

[hyperclock]

Hi,
everytime I login to phpMyAdmin the bottom shows:

Die PHP-Erweiterung "mbstring" wurde nicht gefunden, trotzdem jedoch scheinen Sie einen Mehrbyte-Zeichensatz zu verwenden. Ohne besagte Erweiterung ist phpMyAdmin nicht in der Lage Zeichenketten zu trennen, was zu unerwarteten Ergebnissen führen kann.

I'm using a dedicated server from STRATO, And did the install as far as I could using HOW TO for SuSE 9.3

the only thing I couldn't do was the installation. things I did different are:
1) instead of ::server1.example.com :: i did my strato server name.
2) added zlib zlib-devel postfix after the apt-get update.
3) did dist-update
4) turned SuSe Firewall off
the rest was done according to the HOW TO.

everything else works VERY WELL