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

Under Linux, to find the location of $JAVA_HOME:

readlink -f /usr/bin/java | sed "s:bin/java::"

the cacerts are under lib/security/cacerts:

$(readlink -f /usr/bin/java | sed "s:bin/java::")lib/security/cacerts

Under mac OS X , to find $JAVA_HOME run:

/usr/libexec/java_home

the cacerts are under Home/lib/security/cacerts:

$(/usr/libexec/java_home)/lib/security/cacerts

UPDATE (OS X with JDK)

above code was tested on computer without JDK installed.With JDK installed, as pR0Ps said, it's at

$(/usr/libexec/java_home)/jre/lib/security/cacerts

As of OS X 10.10.1 (Yosemite), the location of the cacerts file has been changed to

$(/usr/libexec/java_home)/jre/lib/security/cacerts

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.