usage of PEAR::AUTH ?

After some kind of struggle through the documentation, missing functions, taking the latest cvs, therefore changing PEAR DB.php (PEAR::isConnection was missing in my local 4.2.1 PHP installation), I am now at the point where I actually like to use Auth. With some basic documentation I got a basic login functionality (with Smarty templates). Now I would like to use session timeout etc. with the existing Auth functions setIdle() etc. But somehow it simply ignores whatever I do. Only when I set $idle manually within Auth.php it is working fine. Is there some kind of documentation (please no hints to the docs ...) about how to actually use the different functions in CONTEXT. e.g. using checkAuth(), instead of getAuth(), where to use getStatus()? getStatus() for instance is in the documentation, but not in the 'latetest download', therefore I used the cvs files. Would be nice to see a 'real' application using Auth! And is there a way to store the session in a DB? And if ... what is the advantage? There is the DB_Session class ... would that be an enhancement ? Any hints are very much appreciated!! Gunther