Textures not always appearing on all sides

I've done a bit of googling and searching the forums, but haven't been able to find an answer to this.

After I create a cube (it happens with some other shapes as well), if I then immediately go to texture all sides via the texture tab, the new texture will appear on all but one of the sides. The bottom stays plywood. In the little window that shows the texture it will have my new texture with the word "multiple".

It isn't a great hardship to have to manually retexture that one side, but I sometimes forget, and once I've linked it into something it becomes more annoying. Since I usually adjust the textures (scale, offset) on a per-side basis anyway, I usually notice it eventually. Still, it is a bit of aggravation to then have to either use the dropper or search for the texture--especially when I'd think it should have been there in the first place.

This has happened for a couple years, on (obviously) different versions of the viewer--both the normal and Windlight, so I assume it is normal behavior.

It's called "the side six bug". It works pretty much as you describe. You go to texture a prim, and all sides except for side number six (which by default happens to be the "bottom" of a cube) take the texture, while side six remains unchanged. It can be quite a pain, especially on prim-heavy builds.

There's unfortunately no fix, and no reliable work-around. It's just something you have to live with.

Some people report a higher success rate when they drag a texture from inventory to the texture picker field, rather than clicking on the field, and then selecting the texture from the popup list. Personally, I think this is most likely just an observational myth, supported by an ongoing game of Telephone. It worked a few times in a row for someone, so that person told some people, and then they told some people, and so on, and so on. Give it a try though. See if you think it makes a difference.

In any case, what's particularly weird about Side Six, and certain other bugs like the infamous local rotation bug, is that it seems to be person-specific. If it affects you, you'll experience it every computer, and every viewer, you use. It even persists across alt accounts, which makes no sense at all. If it doesn't affect you, you'll simply never see it, on any computer, in any viewer, and with any alt. It's completely bizarre, and defies all logical explanation.

Obviously there's got to be a common thread in there somewhere, linking the system's definition of you with your particular status on these bugs, but I'll be damned if I can figure out what it is. There's some evil voodoo dark magic going on there, for sure.