pear:Auth invalid username/password

I'm using Pear Auth on several sites and am looking for suggestions on the best way to implement error reporting on a failed log-in. Currently I'm using a function that checks if the posted username is in the users table...and if the password is a match. Auth logs the user on if so...but if not it takes manually running the queries to generate the right failure message. Is there a cleaner way using error messages generated by the getAuth() method or another method in the Auth class? I didn't see anything in the docs...but it seems like an obvious bit of functionailty I would sort of expect it to be included. Anyone know of such a thing? John Corry