I am getting a message during install than never completes...

Testing mb_strings

Complete setup screen is:

Welcome to Zenphoto! This page will set up Zenphoto 1.4.13 on your web server.

Systems Check:
Installing Zenphoto v1.4.13
zp-data security [is compromised]
Warning!

Zenphoto suggests you make the sensitive files in the zp-data folder accessable by owner only (permissions = 0600). The file permissions for setup.log are 0644 which may allow unauthorized access.

PHP version 5.6.30
PHP Sessions.
PHP Register Globals
PHP Safe Mode
PHP magic_quotes_gpc
PHP magic_quotes_runtime
PHP magic_quotes_sybase
PHP display_errors
PHP gettext() support [is not present]
Warning!

Localization of Zenphoto requires native PHP gettext() support

PHP flock support
Testing mb_strings.

PHP gettext IS installed.

Zenphoto Setup v1.4.13[5e8b3d9eb0]: Thu, 26 Jan 2017 02:37:15 +0000
Query error: Access denied for user ''@'localhost' (using password: NO)
Warn: zp-data security [is compromised] Zenphoto suggests you make the sensitive files in the zp-data folder accessable by owner only (permissions = 0600). The file permissions for setup.log are 0644 which may allow unauthorized access.
Warn: PHP gettext() support [is not present] Localization of Zenphoto requires native PHP gettext() support

This is in the setup log but I don't understand the Access denied error as it has not gotten to a point to ask for login credentials.

Issue resolved. PHP mbstring was NOT installed even though is was reported to be.

How did you fix this? I am having the exact same problem out of the blue.

Thanks,
Joe

mbstring is a native server side PHP extension. Unless you manage your own server, you will need to ask your host about that.