Basic Requirements

Kohana will run in almost any environment with minimal configuration. There are a few minimum server requirements:

1. Server with Unicode support
2. PHP version >= 5.2.3
3. An HTTP server. Kohana is known to work with: Apache 1.3+, Apache 2.0+, lighttpd, and MS IIS

Optionally, if you wish to use a database with Kohana, you will need a database server. There are database drivers for MySQL and PostgreSQL, with additional drivers planned.

1. PCRE must be compiled with –enable-utf8 and –enable-unicode-properties for UTF-8 functions to work properly.
2. iconv is required for UTF-8 transliteration.
3. mcrypt is required for encryption.
4. SPL is required for several core libraries. ¹⁾

1. mbstring will dramatically speed up Kohana's UTF-8 functions. However, note that the mbstring extension must not be overloading PHP's native string functions!