zlib

Hi,

I have PEAR installed and running with php5 on Suse 9.3
I am trying to install Liveuser as I am building an intranet and it seems 
to be just what I want.
However, when I try to execute 
pear install http://pear.php.net/get/LiveUser-0.16.6.tgz

I get an error message telling me that :
The extension 'zlib' couldn't be found.
Please make sure your version of PHP was built with 'zlib' support.

Php definitely has zlib support. 
phpinfo shows this.

Is there a way I can point pear towards a php.ini file, or somehow show it 
that php has zlib compiled into it ?

Many thanks for any help you can offer

Luke