Passing connection string to pg_basebackup

On 18.01.2013 08:50, Amit Kapila wrote:
> I think currently user has no way to specify TCP keepalive settings from
> pg_basebackup, please let me know if there is any such existing way?

I was going to say you can just use "keepalives_idle=30" in the 
connection string. But there's no way to pass a connection string to 
pg_basebackup on the command line! The usual way to pass a connection 
string is to pass it as the database name, and PQconnect will expand it, 
but that doesn't work with pg_basebackup because it hardcodes the 
database name as "replication". D'oh.

You could still use environment variables and a service file to do it, 
but it's certainly more cumbersome. It clearly should be possible to 
pass a full connection string to pg_basebackup, that's an obvious oversight.

- Heikki