Starting new cluster from base backup

[Guillaume Drolet <droletguillaume@xxxxxxxxx>]

Dear listers,

I want to move a cluster from one machine to another. I used pg_basebackup to create an archive and copied/extracted it over the old PGDATA location on the new machine (the server was stopped). If I start pgsql I get these messages in my log file:

2015-02-16 14:29:12 EST LOG:  database system was interrupted; last known up at 2015-02-07 06:31:41 EST
2015-02-16 14:29:12 EST LOG:  invalid checkpoint record
2015-02-16 14:29:12 EST FATAL:  could not locate required checkpoint record
2015-02-16 14:29:12 EST HINT:  If you are not restoring from a backup, try removing the file "E:/data/backup_label".
2015-02-16 14:29:12 EST LOG:  startup process (PID 3148) exited with exit code 1
2015-02-16 14:29:12 EST LOG:  aborting startup due to startup process failure

I assume this is due to the fact the pg_xlog folder is empty (this is how pg_basebackup makes it in the archive) and that I haven't supplied a recovery.conf file with the restore restore_command = 'copy "E:\\archivedir\\%f" "%p"', and the archived WAL files.

Now my question is: it this a correct way of moving a cluster between machines?

If yes, what WAL files will I put in pg_xlog? Would I have needed to copy those that were in the old machine right after the base backup?

If this is not the right way to do it, what is the best way?

Thanks a lot for your help,

Guillaume