Mender distribution "not supported" - what triggers this response?

EDIT by @TheYoctoJester: moved this over from other thread, as it is essentially a duplicate.

Old post, but I’ve created a BBB Mender Yocto which boots and runs. It contacts the Mender server which refuses it on account of an unknown disribution
“ERROR: your distribution (poky) is either not recognized or not supported.
Aborting.”
Did you test your Dunfell build?
I’v tried going back to Zeus, but that drags in Python3.9 and I get loads of failures in bitbakes. (once downgraded to 3.9 and adding diskutils).