pg_basebackup with a twist?

[Ray Stell <stellr@xxxxxx>]

I have a fairly busy primary that I put a symlink in to move pg_xlog 
over to another I/O subsystem.   I was going to build a standby with 
pg_basebackup running the command from the standby host.  I thought 
maybe I could put the symlink in on the new standby, but no go:  
"pg_basebackup: directory "/database/test.basebackup/" exists but is not 
empty" as documented.  Is the only way to do this to "fix" it up after 
the restore?   I want to use the "-x" option in order to get the WAL 
during the backup.  Just curious, my guess is I'll have to build the 
stby from a intermediate file.  TIA.