The worker called sys.exit(1) on any MinIO connection error, so a single
transient 502 from MinIO/its reverse proxy left it dead until a manual restart
or reboot (its scheduled task only runs at system startup). It had been dead
~5 weeks after a 502 on May 9.
- _connect_minio_forever(): retry the initial MinIO connect indefinitely with
capped exponential backoff (5s..120s) instead of exiting.
- main loop: wrap each poll cycle; on any error, log + rebuild the client and
keep polling rather than crashing.
Verified on the box: normal DOCX->PDF still works (~11s e2e); a bogus endpoint
now retries forever without ever calling sys.exit (was the exact May-9 failure).