wallet method is disabled because no wallet is loaded

[jsarenik]

When I run a fresh regtest with an empty datadir and try to getnewaddress, bitcoin-cli fails with

error code: -32601
error message:
Method not found (wallet method is disabled because no wallet is loaded)

This happens with version 40aab35 (current master) of bitcoind.

Expected behavior

On bitcoin 0.20.1 it does not happen:

$ rm -rf ~/.bitcoin/regtest
$ bitcoind --version | head -1
Bitcoin Core version v0.20.1
$ bitcoind -regtest -daemon=1
Bitcoin Core starting
$ bitcoin-cli getnewaddress
bcrt1...
$ bitcoin-cli stop
Bitcoin Core stopping

Actual behavior

$ rm -rf ~/.bitcoin/regtest
$ bitcoind --version | head -1
Bitcoin Core version v0.20.99.0-40aab35e9
$ bitcoind -regtest -daemon=1
Bitcoin Core starting
$ bitcoin-cli getnewaddress
error code: -32601
error message:
Method not found (wallet method is disabled because no wallet is loaded)
$ bitcoin-cli stop
Bitcoin Core stopping

To reproduce

100%

System information

the master version is self-compiled, v0.20.1 is from bitcoincore.org Linux x86_64

Ubuntu 20.04 LTS

$ uname -mr
5.4.0-48-generic x86_64

[promag]

See #15454.

[gwillen]

I think the error messages for this need to be fixed, or there is going to be a huge flood of people with this same issue once #15454 makes it into a release. (Is there already a separate issue or proposal for that?)

[gwillen]

There was some discussion of this on IRC, and thus was born #20101 .