Hello and welcome to community. What’s the content of your /etc/qubes-rpc/policy/qubes.PdfConvert and what’s your default dispVM?
Also there’s no name of the qube where original pdf resided, looking at what you “pasted” above?
What happens when you change default dvm to, for example, debian-11-dvm? And, what exactly means which uses a clone of the fedora-36 template"? That dvm-template is based on clone of fedora-36?
And why didnt I think of that, I see the problem now. In qubes manager → globel settings the default VM was listed as object at 0x....... (sorry I dont have the full message as it disappeared after switching to an actual named dvm). Changing that to fedora-36-dvm (or whonix-ws-dvm) and things are behaving as expected.
Interesting that this was only causing issue with PDF conversion (didn’t have need to try image conversion), regular view/edit in disposableVM was working fine.
And, what exactly means which uses a clone of the fedora-36 template
I cloned the pre-installed fedora-36 template to fedora-36-live and was using the latter for all my templates