SSH connections are not accepted by default in Ubuntu 8, when you try and SSH to a newly installed Ubuntu box, it would say "connect to host localhost port 22: Connection refused".

This is because no SSH server is installed, although a SSH client is installed by default in Ubuntu 8

You can go to the Synaptec Package Manager and search for SSH, there in the results you can chooseto install "openssh-server" and "openssh-blacklist" . Once installed you would then be able to SSH to your Ubuntu server.