Database Refresh confusion

Hello Experts, 
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 -vAnd 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 

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