So I inherited a Linode for which I did not have the private ssh key, and it took me a while to figure out how to authenticate to LiSH using public/private keys. Here is a quick setup guide (for newbs):

Background Info: When ssh authenticates there are two common methods: by password or by private key. It will first try to locate a private key (on OSX this will be in /Users/uname/.ssh), if the private key does not match it will prompt for a password.

Linode provides a web interface for adding public keys (the public pair to your private key) for authentication. This is located in the console tab of your linode dashboard.

Steps to set up public/private key authentication:

1. verify that a key pair exists in your .ssh director. For rsa it should be named id_rsa and id_rsa.pub. If a pair does not exists generate a new one using ssh-keygen -t rsa

2. Copy the entire contents of id_rsa.pub to the form located on the console tab of your linode.

3. Authenticate using the ssh command provided on the console tab of your linode.

If you have any problems run ssh in debug mode with the -v flag