ssh port not opening

["John O Laoi" <brianolaoi@gmail.com>]

Hello,
I am running etch on a dell laptop.
I recently installed ssh:
aptitude install ssh
 and started it:
/etc/init.d/ssh start
yet when I look for open ports with nmap localhost, port 22 is not open.
When I run
# ps -e | grep ssh
I get
 3450 ?        00:00:00 ssh-agent

# ps aux | grep ssh
john   3450  0.0  0.0   4132   692 ?        Ss   09:24   0:00 /usr/bin/ssh-agent /usr/bin/dbus-launch --exit-with-session x-session-manager
root     22026  0.0  0.0   2852   712 pts/0    S+   17:43   0:00 grep ssh


However, I cannot ssh into my host.
The contents of  /etc/default/ssh is

# cat /etc/default/ssh

# Default settings for openssh-server. This file is sourced by /bin/sh from
# /etc/init.d/ssh.

# Options to pass to sshd
SSHD_OPTS=


Any clues?

Also, how do I check the status of a service?
On SUSE, I used 
/etc/init.d/service-name  status

John