global.php blanks pages

[N!ck]

<?
require("/path/to/forums/global.php");
?>

^-- i am trying to include the global.php file in other pages of my site to use certain things from it.

i have a file called shared.inc which i use on my site to have a header function and a footer function. i have included global.php into this shared.inc file, which i in turn include in every php file of my site.

when i was running 2.2.2, it worked fine. i have upgraded to 2.2.3 and now all the pages go blank.