pg_basebackup fails with Could not stat file or directory "./.pg_hba.conf.un~"

Hi,

I’m writing to report a bug with pg_basebackup. It fails with this error:

pg_basebackup: error: could not initiate base backup: ERROR:  could not stat file or directory "./.pg_hba.conf.un~": Permission denied

The file in question is a temporary file created by vim, and has the same permissions and security context as the file that it was editing (pg_hba.conf).

It's unclear to me why pg_basebackup is trying to read this file. It's also unclear why it's failing when it does try to read it, since the file has the same permissions and security context that should allow the instance to read it (even though the backup really shouldn’t need to read it).

The directory where it resides is /var/lib/pgsql/data (this is where pg_hba.conf resides as well).

Please note: After I removed the file, the backup ran normally. I have not tested to see whether other temp files in the same directory would cause a similar failure.

Database version:

postgres=# select version();

                                                   version

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

PostgreSQL 13.7 on x86_64-redhat-linux-gnu, compiled by gcc (GCC) 8.5.0 20210514 (Red Hat 8.5.0-10), 64-bit

Thanks,

Gary Stephens

Enterprise Holdings, Incorporated