How to obtain the location of cacerts of the default java installation?

Question

I am looking on how how to obtain the location of cacerts of the default java installation, when you do not have JAVA_HOME or JRE_HOME

Answer 1

If you need to access those certs programmatically it is best to not use the file at all, but access it via the trust manager. The following code is from a OpenJDK Test case (which makes sure the built cacerts collection is not empty):

TrustManagerFactory trustManagerFactory =
    TrustManagerFactory.getInstance("PKIX");
trustManagerFactory.init((KeyStore) null);
TrustManager[] trustManagers =
    trustManagerFactory.getTrustManagers();
X509TrustManager trustManager =
    (X509TrustManager) trustManagers[0];
X509Certificate[] acceptedIssuers =
    trustManager.getAcceptedIssuers();

So you don’t have to deal with file location or keystore password.