Just trying to put together the hot_standby setup All docs I read are pointing to use as prefered method to use pg_basebackup to set the base So far so good But
pg_basebackup does the equivalent of pg_start_backup and pg_stop_backup for you. It is not helpful, and might even sometimes be harmful, to do them yourself when using pg_basebackup.
Pretty much every where I looked at -x is not mentioned to be used
So what gives ? What did I miss ? It's gotta be soomething
That certainly isn't my experience. If you find sites that don't mention -x, -X, or --xlog-method, then I would be reluctant to take any of that site's other advice seriously.
But note that in version 10, -x will go away and the default will be changed so that not specifying anything will be the same as -X stream. perhaps you are reading advice aimed at a future version.