I have a backup of mail messages I have from back when i was in school using pine and I want to have them imported to my Gmail.  So I set up dovecot and my Gmail can access it just fine but it can't find anything except my inbox (which I can't even find).  I've moved my mail directory and I can view the emails using alpine but I cannot view my inbox using alpine.  Also, although Gmail can get my new test messages, it can't find the messages in ~/mail where I am viewing them with alpine.  How do I make it so Gmail can pull from ~/mail or ~/Maildir because I also converted the messages in ~/mail to ~/Maildir format but although I've tried 
mail_location = mbox:~/mail
mail_location = mbox:~/Maildir
mail_location = maildir:~/mail
and 
mail_location = maildir:~/Maildir

None of this worked but mail_location = maildir:~/Maildir is the only one that will at least allow me to get test messages in my inbox which Gmail can then pull.

How do I resolve these issues?

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