Well, sshd just wasn't running. For some reason, android-gadget-service didn't actually do anything. I've started sshd manually by running sudo /etc/init.d/ssh start and it works.

Info I've gathered when trying to determine if it's running:

I've run sudo lsof -i -n -P | grep LISTEN on the phone to know if port 22 is open, but it wasn't in the output, which means nothing is listening on it.

Then I've run sudo ps aux | grep ssh and no matter if ssh is enabled or not it reports process from /usr/bin/ssh-agent /usr/bin/dbus-launch --exit-with-session ubuntu-touch-session command to be in the interruptible sleep (Ss in the STAT column). It doesn't report anything else, except grep --color=auto ssh due to results being filtered by grep.

Now, as I started it, the output also contains /usr/sbin/sshd -D -o PasswordAuthentication=no.

@farkasdvd thanks for the reply! It's helpful to know.

It turns out the connection is refused before it reaches sshd. Disabled ssh, rebooted, and checked android-gadget-service status ssh to ensure it's disabled, tried to connect but got the same message. Also, logs in /var/log/auth.log don't contain any ssh logs (apart from running sudo sshd -t).

Hi! I've just flashed my Xperia 10, and it's the first time I'm using Ubuntu Touch. I've tried to set up SSH using this instruction. However, it immediately refuses my connection with the following message:
ssh: connect to host 192.168.1.204 port 22: Connection refused
I've then tried to verify sshd's configuration by running sudo sshd -t and got the following error messages (reconstruction):

could not load host key /etc/ssh/ssh_host_rsa_key
could not load host key /etc/ssh/ssh_host_dsa_key
could not load host key /etc/ssh/ssh_host_ecdsa_key
could not load host key /etc/ssh/ssh_host_ed25519_key
Missing privilege separation directory: /var/run/sshd

I've checked for these keys, and they weren't existing. So, I've generated them myself using ssh-keygen. As for the folder — it's generated by the service script, so it isn't a problem.

But still, after rebooting the phone, I can't connect to it, with the same immediate ssh: connect to host 192.168.1.204 port 22: Connection refused error message.

What can I do or where should I look? Thanks in advance.