Vault Status missing Version prior to Init

[aphorise]

Vault does not correctly report it's version prior to being initialised and this is also true for all cluster members that are in a similar state prior to being successfully peered. It can be bit of an annoyance when for example provisioning upgrades or introducing new nodes whose versions can only be determined with direct access to the binaries files on the host.

Using a newly configured and running instance (config below) both CLI & API similarly do not output the known Vault version:

# // VIA CLI:
vault status
 # Key                      Value
 # ---                      -----
 # Recovery Seal Type       awskms
 # Initialized              false
 # Sealed                   true
 # Total Recovery Shares    0
 # Threshold                0
 # Unseal Progress          0/0
 # Unseal Nonce             n/a
 # Version                  n/a
 # HA Enabled               true

# // VIA API:
vault status -format=json | jq '.'
 # {
 #   "type": "awskms",
 #   "initialized": false,
 #   "sealed": true,
 #   "t": 0,
 #   "n": 0,
 #   "progress": 0,
 #   "nonce": "",
 #   "version": "",
 #   "migration": false,
 #   "recovery_seal": true,
 #   "storage_type": "raft"
 # }

vault operator init ... # …
# // after a successful int all versions now are reported

The expected behaviour is for version to be reported and not contigent to initilisation or anything else.

Environment:

• Vault CLI Version (retrieve with vault version): Vault v1.4.2
• Server Operating System/Architecture: uname -pisorv ; # Linux 4.19.0-9-amd64 #1 SMP Debian 4.19.118-2 (2020-04-29) GNU/Linux

Vault server configuration file(s):

api_addr = "https://192.168.178.252:8200"
cluster_addr = "https://192.168.178.252:8201"
listener "tcp" {
  address       = "0.0.0.0:8200"
  cluster_address  = "192.168.178.252:8201"
  tls_cert_file = "/home/vagrant/vault2_certificate.crt"
  tls_key_file = "/home/vagrant/vault2_private.key"
}
storage "raft" {
        path            = "/vault/data"
#       node_id         = "vault2"
}
# // seal stanza eg: seal "awkskms" { ...
disable_mlock = true
log_level = "trace"
ui = true
raw_storage_endpoint = true

PS - May have some relevance to #9185 in so far as response formatting"na" vs "" # empty string.