How to resolve ADB Sideload "error: closed"

Problem:

You are using adb sideload to communicate with your Android device (e.g. to flash the Nexus 4 using Clockworkmod recovery), but every time you try to execute adb sideload you get this error message:

error: closed

Solution

As the error message isn’t really specific, there might be numerous possible reasons for it. For me (on Ubuntu 12.10), this worked:

As the same user that executes adb sideload, run

adb usb

After that you should be able to use sideload without any error.