Tim Holloway wrote:I think you got confused. /etc/ssh_config should have been the file on the machine you are connecting FROM, /etc/ssh/sshd_config should be what controls the ssh daemon on the RPi itself.
More importantly, I suspect that when you yanked all those GUI packages you snipped out whatever was causing the sshd daemon to auto-start on boot. Unless the daemon is up and listening on the Pi, attempts to connect will fail.
I'm a bit out of practice on the nuances of debian, but control of daemons is normally accomplished by establishing aliases in the /etc/rcX.d directories. Without a GUI, you'd be running at runlevel 3, so there should have been an alias such as /etc/rc3.d/S55sshd pointing to /etc/init.d/sshd.
I decided this time not to mess around with it anymore. I will check if there are any pre-built images for the RasPi without all the UI packages.