no, btcgarden didn't use a cgminer.conf file to configure cgminer...that is why all the configs are on the script when it starts cgminer

so, you have api-listen running, it should be going

you might try downloading miner.php from https://github.com/kanoi/cgminer/blob/master/miner.php and putting it in the /var/www directory on the miner.  If that runs and works, you know that the cgminer api is pushing data