adb is a great way to debug Android devices (even with no root access), including Kobo Vox. See some details here:
http://wiki.cyanogenmod.com/wiki/ADB. For any adb debugging, you have to enable "USB debugging" in the "Development" section of the System Settings on your Kobo Vox.
You can use install adbwireless apk and do it over WiFi, but in some cases (like when WiFi doesn't work) you may need the adb over USB way.
It's supposed to work under Windows, but I couldn't make it work (google USB drivers didn't work), so I ended up installing Linux on my laptop (first I shrunk the Windows XP partition, using Gparted software ran from a CD), and after some tinkering I made adb over USB work, under Linux. Here are the short instructions.
Your Linux box should have development packages installed (at the very least JDK - java development kit).
All these commands should be executed on your Linux box. Download Linux Android SDK tgz archive from
http://developer.android.com/sdk/index.html .
Code:
tar xvzf android*.tgz
export PATH=$HOME/android-sdk-linux/tools:$HOME/android-sdk-linux/platform/tools:$PATH
android
Mark "Android 2.3.3", "Android SDK Tools", "Android SDK Platform-Tools", all "Extras". Install all.
This was a tricky one. I found the instructions on the web, and it worked for me. The idVendor corresponds to Kobo. You need to login as root to your Linux box to execute this command:
Code:
echo 'SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTR{idVendor}=="2237", MODE="0666", GROUP="plugdev"' >> /etc/udev/rules.d/51-android.rules
Here again I'm using the Kobo id. Sometimes the file is reset, so I have to repeat this command again:
Code:
echo 0x2237 >> ~/.android/adb_usb.ini
adb kill-server
adb start-server
Attach Kobo Vox to the Linux box using a USB cable. Don't click "Access files" on your Kobo unit.
Should print something meaningful (not an empty list).
At this point, stop all the non-essential running processes on Kobo (using System settings), and turn off the WiFi - just in case. Insert an >=8GB micro-SD card into the external card slot on Kobo.
Creating a clone of the internal micro-SD card:
Code:
dd if=/dev/block/mmcblk0 of=/dev/block/mmcblk1 bs=4096
This will take ~30 minutes, and should print that it successfully copied ~8GB of data at the end. There should be no error messages!