Database Refresh confusion

Today, my colleague asked me if there was any way to check the progress of recovery (backup-recovery) in Postgresql. I told him to check the postgresql logs and look out for keywords such as recovery. He was refreshing the database by restoring a database backup but the method he tried surprised me. 

The below commands were used:

pg_basebackup -h remoteservername -p Port number -D /path -X s -c fast -n -P -v

And he just started the postgresql cluster using pg_ctl 

I told him that he missed creating a recovery.conf with a recovery command, but he told me that he always does this way.  I told him that the process is wrong and this will do a crash recovery and there are high chances of data corruption. He replied saying he never faced an issue following his process of doing it without recovery.conf

2 questions:

1. Is this a good practice for refreshing data into a new server. 

2. Is there any other mechanism to track the restoration process other than to check the postgresql logs. 

The postgresql version used in 10.0 on a Linux 6.9

Thanks, 

Rijo Roy