ssh connection refused

The most common cause of "SSH refusal" is old versions of PuTTY on Windows (ciphers changed, no longer compatible) but that's rarely the issue with macOS/Linux clients. Did you enable "disable password auth" in LE settings?

On the client side ssh -vvv ... will show what is going on.

On the RPI create a log via LE Settings Addon or Samba share and check for errors.

Well this was happening to me consistently and this is how I fixed it. I mounted the SAMBA logfiles share and found this gem:

Quote

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
@ WARNING: UNPROTECTED PRIVATE KEY FILE! @

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

Permissions 0620 for '/storage/.cache/ssh/ssh_host_rsa_key' are too open.

It is required that your private key files are NOT accessible by others.

This private key will be ignored.

1. I shut down the rpi400 and yanked the sd card

2. I inserted the SD Card into my iMac running fedora

3. nothing happened

4. commence searching!

5. running `lspci` I discovered with some chagrin that I owned a Broadcom BCM57765/57785 SDXC/MMC Card Reader

6. I ran these commands to mount my wicked high speed sd card as just-sort-highish speed

sudo rmmod sdhci_pci sdhci
sudo modprobe sdhci debug_quirks2=4
sudo modprobe sdhci_pci

A quick reinsertion of the card sufficed. With the SD card mounted I `cd`'d to libreelec's /storage/.cache/ssh and did a

sudo chmod 600 ./*

That having been accomplished, I reinserted the card and rebooted, and hey presto, ssh works again, I no longer need to mount the farkakte smb shares.