[Mediawiki-l] AuthPlugin always fails with fatal error on initial authentication

[Carlton B]

I am using AuthPlugin to authenticate against an external database.   The
first time a user logs in, without exception they see this error:

Fatal error: Call to a member function on a non-object in
/home/myaccountname/public_html/mediawiki-1.4.2/includes/SpecialUserlogin.ph
p on line 266

If the user then navigates back to the login page and attempts to log in
again, it succeeds as if nothing happened, and never fails again.  This only
happens on the initial login attempt.

You can reproduce this by registering with my message board -
www.takimedia.com/boards - and then trying to log into the wiki at -
www.takimedia.com/wiki (Please ignore the content, right now this wiki is
being tested by my friends, who are just a bunch of alcoholic vandals).

I tried looking through the code, but due to the abundance of global
variables I had a hard time figuring out what is going on.  I am suspicous
of the autocreate function, though.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
Carlton