by dan attwood.
PHp version infomation below:
PHP 5.5.9-1ubuntu4.4 (cli) (built: Sep 4 2014 06:56:34)
Copyright (c) 1997-2014 The PHP Group
Zend Engine v2.5.0, Copyright (c) 1998-2014 Zend Technologies
with Zend OPcache v7.0.3, Copyright (c) 1999-2014, by Zend Technologies
Martins will be the same
I would say that this is definitely a bug, as to if it's Moodles or Ubuntu fault then that that's less clear.
Given that your fix works though and other Moodles will be running atop Ubuntu it's probably worth highlighting it to HQ regardless.