You may have done it and not mentioned, but the directory structure made by the bulk loader needs to be moved around for the alpha to actually use it.
Eg: ./out/0/p is the result for a single alpha group, but the last level p should be directly in the working directory of the first group’s alpha(s)
https://dgraph.io/docs/deploy/fast-data-loading/bulk-loader/#how-to-properly-bulk-load