problem with lirc over network under Ubuntu 18.04

Hi,

yesterday I upgrade my machine from 16.04 to 18.04.
Currently lirc 0.10.0-2 is installed from the Ubuntu repositories.

Until yesterday I had lircd running like this:
"/usr/sbin/lircd -c 192.168.0.12 --driver=null --nodaemon".
It connected to a Raspberry PI with an IR Receiver. And everything 
worked just fine.

When I tried to start it today with above command I got:
"Driver `null' not found or not loadable (wrong or missing 
-U/--plugindir?)."

If I omit the driver I get the following messages, which continue to 
spam the console as long as lircd is running:

lircd-0.10.0[32454]: Info: lircd:  Opening log, level: Info
lircd-0.10.0[32454]: Warning: Running as root
lircd-0.10.0[32454]: Info: Using remote: /etc/lirc/lircd.conf.
lircd-0.10.0[32454]: Notice: lircd(devinput) ready, using 
/var/run/lirc/lircd
lircd-0.10.0[32454]: Name lookup failure connecting to 192.168.3.125U: 
Success
lircd-0.10.0[32454]: Notice: accepted new client on /var/run/lirc/lircd
lircd-0.10.0[32454]: Info: initializing 'auto'
lircd-0.10.0[32454]: Cannot run glob 
/sys/class/rc/rc0/input[0-9]*/event[0-9]*: No such file or directory
lircd-0.10.0[32454]: Notice: No input device available for devinput 
driver. Consider stopping lircd.socket or reconfigure lirc
lircd-0.10.0[32454]: Error: Cannot glob 
/sys/class/rc/rc0/input[0-9]*/event[0-9]*
lircd-0.10.0[32454]: Warning: Failed to initialize hardware
lircd-0.10.0[32454]: Error: Cannot glob 
/sys/class/rc/rc0/input[0-9]*/event[0-9]*
lircd-0.10.0[32454]: Error: Cannot glob 
/sys/class/rc/rc0/input[0-9]*/event[0-9]*
lircd-0.10.0[32454]: Error: Cannot glob 
/sys/class/rc/rc0/input[0-9]*/event[0-9]*
lircd-0.10.0[32454]: Error: Cannot glob 
/sys/class/rc/rc0/input[0-9]*/event[0-9]*
lircd-0.10.0[32454]: Error: Cannot glob 
/sys/class/rc/rc0/input[0-9]*/event[0-9]*
lircd-0.10.0[32454]: Error: Cannot glob 
/sys/class/rc/rc0/input[0-9]*/event[0-9]*
lircd-0.10.0[32454]: Error: Cannot glob 
/sys/class/rc/rc0/input[0-9]*/event[0-9]*
lircd-0.10.0[32454]: Error: Cannot glob 
/sys/class/rc/rc0/input[0-9]*/event[0-9]*
lircd-0.10.0[32454]: Error: Cannot glob 
/sys/class/rc/rc0/input[0-9]*/event[0-9]*
lircd-0.10.0[32454]: Error: Cannot glob 
/sys/class/rc/rc0/input[0-9]*/event[0-9]*
lircd-0.10.0[32454]: Error: Cannot glob 
/sys/class/rc/rc0/input[0-9]*/event[0-9]*
lircd-0.10.0[32454]: Error: Cannot glob 
/sys/class/rc/rc0/input[0-9]*/event[0-9]*
lircd-0.10.0[32454]: Error: Cannot glob 
/sys/class/rc/rc0/input[0-9]*/event[0-9]*
lircd-0.10.0[32454]: Error: Cannot glob 
/sys/class/rc/rc0/input[0-9]*/event[0-9]*
lircd-0.10.0[32454]: Error: Cannot glob 
/sys/class/rc/rc0/input[0-9]*/event[0-9]*
lircd-0.10.0[32454]: Error: Cannot glob 
/sys/class/rc/rc0/input[0-9]*/event[0-9]*
lircd-0.10.0[32454]: Error: Cannot glob 
/sys/class/rc/rc0/input[0-9]*/event[0-9]*
lircd-0.10.0[32454]: Error: Cannot glob 
/sys/class/rc/rc0/input[0-9]*/event[0-9]*
lircd-0.10.0[32454]: Error: Cannot glob 
/sys/class/rc/rc0/input[0-9]*/event[0-9]*
lircd-0.10.0[32454]: Error: Cannot glob 
/sys/class/rc/rc0/input[0-9]*/event[0-9]*
lircd-0.10.0[32454]: Error: Cannot glob 
/sys/class/rc/rc0/input[0-9]*/event[0-9]*
lircd-0.10.0[32454]: Error: Cannot glob 
/sys/class/rc/rc0/input[0-9]*/event[0-9]*
lircd-0.10.0[32454]: Error: Cannot glob 
/sys/class/rc/rc0/input[0-9]*/event[0-9]*
lircd-0.10.0[32454]: Error: Cannot glob 
/sys/class/rc/rc0/input[0-9]*/event[0-9]*
lircd-0.10.0[32454]: Name lookup failure connecting to 192.168.3.125U: 
Success
lircd-0.10.0[32454]: Error: Cannot glob 
/sys/class/rc/rc0/input[0-9]*/event[0-9]*


Unfortunately "irw" does not produce any output while lircd is running.
And I am confused about this output:
"Name lookup failure connecting to 192.168.3.125U: Success"

Reverse Lookup for this IP works btw.

The pending letter "U" behind the IP doesn't make things clearer. 
Sometimes it is a "V", but I could not figure out why it changed.

I then tried running lircd like this:
/usr/sbin/lircd -c 192.168.3.125 --driver=udp --nodaemon

which produced the following output:
lircd-0.10.0[18919]: Info: lircd:  Opening log, level: Info
lircd-0.10.0[18919]: Warning: Running as root
lircd-0.10.0[18919]: Info: Using remote: /etc/lirc/lircd.conf.
lircd-0.10.0[18919]: Notice: lircd(udp) ready, using /var/run/lirc/lircd
lircd-0.10.0[18919]: Name lookup failure connecting to 192.168.3.125U: 
Success
lircd-0.10.0[18919]: Notice: accepted new client on /var/run/lirc/lircd
lircd-0.10.0[18919]: Info: Initializing UDP: auto
lircd-0.10.0[18919]: Error: invalid port: auto
lircd-0.10.0[18919]: Warning: Failed to initialize hardware
lircd-0.10.0[18919]: Error: invalid port: auto
lircd-0.10.0[18919]: Error: invalid port: auto
lircd-0.10.0[18919]: Name lookup failure connecting to 192.168.3.125U: 
Success
lircd-0.10.0[18919]: Error: invalid port: auto

Since it complained about the invalid port "auto" I specified one:
/usr/sbin/lircd -c 192.168.3.125:8765 --driver=udp --nodaemon
...which made things even worse.

The output varies on every invocation. Here are a few examples:
lircd: bad port number "8765ce: %s��N��U"
lircd: bad port number "8765ce: %s� �ơU"
lircd: bad port number "8765ce: %s�>KV"
lircd: bad port number "8765ce: %s֠�M�U"
lircd: bad port number "8765ce: %s��-V"
lircd: bad port number "8765ce: %s֠�}�U"
lircd: bad port number "8765ce: %s�P��=V"

The cryptic signs are no encoding error. This is pretty much what showed 
up on my console. ...and there is the mysterious "U" or "V" again at the 
end of the string.

I also tested the current git version.

Running it from inside the compile directory like this:
daemons/lircd -c 192.168.3.125:8765 --nodaemon --driver=udp 
--plugindir=plugins/.libs
It yields the same results as above.
Latest commit has ID: 60ed3b055975ee5a2ed54c67a829ed5ad7da7b76


Any help is greatly appreciated.

Regards,
André