Im having the same problem, I think.
I used
this tutorial in 2009 and just a few month ago the script stopped working, after reading
this comment I tested my script on an older Ubuntu release and it was working without problems there.
Non working php version: 5.3.2 (also tested on 5.3.3)
Working php version: 5.2.4
Any hint on how to solve this would be nice.