I've had the same issue with both the Yocto and Ubilinux distribution when utilizing wifi. If I enable wifi at any point during the boot process or manually once fully booted, the entire board reboots without an error or any other indications as to what may be going on. This occurs with both usb0 up and down. Does anyone have any guidance as how to debug?
Could it be power supply issues? I'm currently using my 2011 macbook pro running Ubuntu to provide power to the Edison Arduino board. The USB port should be providing 500mA at 5V.