Drupal install initialization. Unicode library. mbstring.http_input

What led up to the situation?
Updated system (from Debian 7 to Debian 8 and existing Drupal install.) I was then trying to get Drupal running with virtualhost which I seem to have success with. I want to test out pages before they are transferred to the live hosting site. I could not get past the initial Drupal startup.
* What exactly did you do (or not do) that was effective (or
ineffective)?
Tried everything under the sun:
modified /etc/php5/cli/php.ini (input_encoding, mbstring.http_input others)
modified /etc/drupal/7/htaccess
kept restarting apache and update.php ing.

* What was the outcome of this action?
Nothing. Same result no matter what.
* What outcome did you expect instead?
I want the package working so I could start working on my website. I have found tonnes of historic references to this error. It is not supposed to be happening because mbstring.http_input is suppose to be depricated as of php 5.6.

It's killing me. I spent a day on this. I am not a PHP programmer nor am I a Drupal person. I end up trying all the different historic solutions I find on line and a few that make sense to me.

Anyway even if you tell me it is because I am a noob and missed something that would be great. I just can't buy it. I have been using Linux/Debian for over 10 years. I think that more people will be having this issue after updating.
The drupal startup will not move past the the point in the attached image because of the ostensible error!
-- System Information:
Debian Release: 8.0
APT prefers stable-updates
APT policy: (500, 'stable-updates'), (500, 'stable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 3.16.0-4-amd64 (SMP w/4 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_CA.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_CA.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)

Versions of packages drupal7 depends on:
ii apache2 [httpd] 2.4.10-10
ii curl 7.38.0-4+deb8u2
ii dbconfig-common 1.8.47+nmu3
ii debconf [debconf-2.0] 1.5.56
ii exim4-daemon-light [mail-transport-agent] 4.84-8
ii mysql-client 5.5.43-0+deb8u1
ii mysql-client-5.5 [virtual-mysql-client] 5.5.43-0+deb8u1
ii php5 5.6.7+dfsg-1
ii php5-gd 5.6.7+dfsg-1
ii php5-mysql 5.6.7+dfsg-1
ii wwwconfig-common 0.2.2

Versions of packages drupal7 recommends:
ii mysql-server 5.5.43-0+deb8u1

drupal7 suggests no packages.

-- debconf information:
* drupal7/database-type: mysql
drupal7/pgsql/no-empty-passwords:
drupal7/pgsql/method: unix socket
* drupal7/install-error: ignore
drupal7/db/app-user: drupal7
drupal7/pgsql/authmethod-user:
drupal7/remote/host:
drupal7/internal/reconfiguring: false
drupal7/upgrade-error: abort
drupal7/db/basepath:
drupal7/internal/skip-preseed: false
drupal7/pgsql/changeconf: false
drupal7/missing-db-package-error: abort
drupal7/db/dbname: drupal7
drupal7/remove-error: abort
* drupal7/dbconfig-install: true
drupal7/passwords-do-not-match:
drupal7/mysql/admin-user: root
drupal7/remote/port:
drupal7/dbconfig-reinstall: false
drupal7/pgsql/manualconf:
drupal7/upgrade-backup: true
drupal7/purge: false
drupal7/dbconfig-upgrade: true
drupal7/remote/newhost:
drupal7/mysql/method: unix socket
drupal7/pgsql/admin-user: postgres
drupal7/pgsql/authmethod-admin: ident
* drupal7/dbconfig-remove: