User picture URL creation fails causing fatal error

When an existing Drupal user tries to access the discourse site which is connected with SSO, and a discourse login is not yet created for that user, he is redirected to drupal which shows an unexpected error:

The website encountered an unexpected error. Please try again later.

Drupal\Core\Entity\Exception\UndefinedLinkTemplateException: No link template 'canonical' found for the 'file' entity type in Drupal\Core\Entity\EntityBase->toUrl() (line 196 of core/lib/Drupal/Core/Entity/EntityBase.php).
Drupal\discourse_sso\Controller\DiscourseSsoController->validate() (Line: 85)
Drupal\discourse_sso\Controller\DiscourseSsoController->discourse_sso()
call_user_func_array(Array, Array) (Line: 123)
Drupal\Core\EventSubscriber\EarlyRenderingControllerWrapperSubscriber->Drupal\Core\EventSubscriber\{closure}() (Line: 573)
Drupal\Core\Render\Renderer->executeInRenderContext(Object, Object) (Line: 124)
Drupal\Core\EventSubscriber\EarlyRenderingControllerWrapperSubscriber->wrapControllerExecutionInRenderContext(Array, Array) (Line: 97)
Drupal\Core\EventSubscriber\EarlyRenderingControllerWrapperSubscriber->Drupal\Core\EventSubscriber\{closure}() (Line: 158)
Symfony\Component\HttpKernel\HttpKernel->handleRaw(Object, 1) (Line: 80)
Symfony\Component\HttpKernel\HttpKernel->handle(Object, 1, 1) (Line: 57)
Drupal\Core\StackMiddleware\Session->handle(Object, 1, 1) (Line: 47)
Drupal\Core\StackMiddleware\KernelPreHandle->handle(Object, 1, 1) (Line: 106)
Drupal\page_cache\StackMiddleware\PageCache->pass(Object, 1, 1) (Line: 85)
Drupal\page_cache\StackMiddleware\PageCache->handle(Object, 1, 1) (Line: 47)
Drupal\Core\StackMiddleware\ReverseProxyMiddleware->handle(Object, 1, 1) (Line: 52)
Drupal\Core\StackMiddleware\NegotiationMiddleware->handle(Object, 1, 1) (Line: 23)
Stack\StackedHttpKernel->handle(Object, 1, 1) (Line: 705)
Drupal\Core\DrupalKernel->handle(Object) (Line: 19)