Setting PROVISIONING_NETWORK_DISABLED to true disables all operator functionality

[mjovanovic0]

What steps did you take and what happened:
When the PROVISIONING_NETWORK_DISABLED environment variable is set, the operator becomes unusable in clusters that do not have a provisioning network.

What did you expect to happen:
Certain features should remain available even when a provisioning network is not present (as was the case prior to v0.11.0).
For example, node registration and power management operations (Power Off/On, Reboot) should still function without a provisioning network.

Anything else you would like to add:
In versions prior to v0.11.0, it was possible to register nodes and use the power management features without relying on a provisioning network. This was acceptable in scenarios where dynamic provisioning was not required and was useful for administrators performing maintenance tasks. With the changes introduced in v0.11.0, specifically the addition of the environment variable mentioned above (see: f462c92), all
of these functionalities are now unavailable.

Environment:

• Baremetal Operator version: OpenShift build
  Go Version: go1.24.6 (Red Hat 1.24.6-1.el9_6) X:strictfipsruntime
  Go OS/Arch: linux/amd64
  Git commit: a7d0035
• Environment (metal3-dev-env or other): OpenShift 4.20.3

/kind bug

[dtantsur]

For example, node registration and power management operations (Power Off/On, Reboot) should still function without a provisioning network.

So, you suggest allowing creating hosts with inspection and cleaning disabled but rejecting immediately any attempt to provision them?

[mjovanovic0]

Yes.

I can investigate through codebase and submit PR with suggestion.

[dtantsur]

@mjovanovic0 please do. It should not be hard, just tweak the condition that was introduces in that commit.

/triage accepted