$re = '/^.*\[.*\].*\[client\s+.*:.*\].*authentication\s+failure.*\.php$/';
$str = '[Thu Jan 07 21:09:50.120651 2016] [:error] [pid 26210] [client 123.123.123.123:12878] user hgfhfg authentication failure, referer: https://example.com/administrator/index.php';
preg_match_all($re, $str, $matches, PREG_SET_ORDER, 0);
// Print the entire match result
var_dump($matches);
Please keep in mind that these code samples are automatically generated and are not guaranteed to work. If you find any syntax errors, feel free to submit a bug report. For a full regex reference for PHP, please visit: http://php.net/manual/en/ref.pcre.php