sshd basics

HI,

I am trying to set up sshd on RH 7.1 and I am not able to connect to it.

ps aux | grep ssh

shows that the daemon is started, and the keys do appear to exist:
/etc/init.d/sshd restart does restart without complaints.

I configured /etc/ssh/sshd_config file like this:
http://en.tldp.org/LDP/solrhe/Securing-Optimizing-Linux-RH-Edition-v1.3/chap
15sec121.html


I made /etc/hosts.allow say:

sshd: ALL:ALL
portmap: ALL:ALL
ALL:ALL:DENY

and

/etc/hosts.deny say:
ALL:ALL:DENY

as per
http://www-personal.si.umich.edu/~dhogan/documentation/unix/server-installs.
html


But I cannot connect to the machine. Even from within the machine, ssh -l
root localhost says the connection is refused. When I try to connect
remotely, the SSH client does not ask me to accept and save the key. I used
to know how to configure an ssh server but I have been out of the scene for
a while. Can anyone help me out on this one?

Thanks,

ERic