Gem rdoc failing

Previously upon installing gems with gem install -d rdocs would be
generated and stored in the expected location /usr/lib/…/1.8/doc

However I recently did some explicit gem installs and forgot to include
the -d option. Now when I run gem rdoc --all it says its installing
rdocs, and it takes its sweet time, but nothing shows up in the doc
directories (the directories exist for each gem, they just are empty).

Any hints or debugging tips?