If an error occurs in the foreground (backup) process of pg_basebackup, and we exit in a controlled way, the background process (streaming xlog process) would stay around and keep streaming.
This can happen for example if disk space runs out and there is very low activity on the server. (If there is activity on the server, the background streamer will also run out of disk space and exit)
Attached patch kills it off in disconnect_and_exit(), which seems like the right thing to do to me.
Any objections to applying and backpatching that for the upcoming minor releases?
Do you get a different error message with this patch than before? Is the new one better than the old one?
Previously you got double error messages - one from the foreground, and a second one from the background sometime in the future (whenever it eventually failed, and for whatever reason - so if it was out of disk space, it would complain about that once it got enough xlog for it to happen).
With the patch you just get the error message from the first process. The background process doesn't give an error on SIGTERM, it just exists.
Since there were no other objections, I've applied this patch.
