I recently installed Ubuntu Server 14.04 onto a 32GB pen drive. This is used as the main drive for an Intel NUC.
-System-
Intel Nuc (i3 D34010WYK) - Headless
Sandisk USB3 micro pen drive (used instead of internal Msata HD)
WD 3TB USB external Drive
Wifi to ethernet bridge (for now)
Install was no problem, initially it ran great.
I am having a unique problem (I can't find similar scenarios through my searches). I have a 3TB WD external drive also plugged in via USB. I have FSTAB set up using UUID to mount but when ubuntu boots, it looks as though it is trying to boot from the 3TB drive to boot and then failing.
If I try to boot without the 3TB drive plugged in it fails, as the drive could not be detected when fstab goes to mount it.
My initial thought was GRUB, but I'm not sure what the various settings in are. I can see HD1 in a comma separated page that has things about floppy disks (pressed E for "edit commands") and thought maybe I need to take that out and make it USBXXX. I'm a bit worried about this as I have never had good luck with GRUB.
To add a bit more weirdness, after this has happened, the nuc will not boot to the USB pen drive. It instead goes to the network boot and the uefi doesn't show it as a boot option. If I remove and plug back in, it works. I really don't want to get an MSATA drive as they are expensive. The NUC was cheap, is small, and low energy.
Any help would be awesome, I'm very new to linux, only played with a few VM's and a raspberry pi as a file server (samba).