catch exceptions and fix some vars

resolve an issue where autorestart wont catch an exception leading to the global exception handler preventing restart.

resolve another issue where custom random_reauth_delay value was ignored

also cleaned up some of the auth_ vars... some more cleanup should be done at some point because many other methods pass the timeout, safe mode, and tries values up the call stack when not really necessary.
Also if my memory services me correctly,  reverting this commit could have broken something.