When cloning a standby, how can I prevent pg_basebackup from copying postgresql.conf and pg_hba.conf from the master to /var/lib/pgsql/9.9/data directory?
Currently I am using this command
[root@xyz..]# pg_basebackup -h {master ipAddr} -D /var/lib/pgsql/9.6/data -U postgres -v -P
The backup will include all files in the data directory and tablespaces, including the configuration files and any additional files placed in the directory by third parties. But only regular files and directories are copied. Symbolic links (other than those used for tablespaces) and special device files are skipped.
So there is no such option. If you still want to force it, move config files away from data directory (and optionally ln them to data_dir)
This answer is for Postgres 14. pg_basebackup takes backup of the entire data directory. https://www.postgresql.org/docs/14/app-pgbasebackup.html states that the backup utility will skip all directory/file that are symbolic links. So, that could be a workaround to get only desired content into the tar ball.
I had faced similar situations where I wanted to exclude the content of multiple directories like pg_replslot,pg_dynshmem, pg_notify etc. I made the tar ball the usual way: pg_basebackup -D /backup/ -F t -P -v. After the tar ball was made, and before restoring it to another server, I updated the tar manually by excluding content of all the required directories.