Working with Multiple Keystore Implementations

The Symbian key store architecture allows devices to have multiple, coexisting, keystore implementations. All implementations are accessed through an abstraction layer: the “unified keystore”.

keytool fully supports multiple key store implementations with the option –store which can be used to specify a particular key store implementation which a command must use. To see a list of all available key store implementations the command –listtores or -ls for short, can be used. For example, you can use:

keytool –ls

And obtain as result an output similar to:

Symbian KeyStore Manipulation Tool
Copyright (c) 2004-2009 Nokia Corporation and/or its subsidiary(-ies).  All rights reserved.
[0] Store Label: On-device key store
Version: 1.00    Serial Number: 0        Manufacturer: Nokia Corporation

Each key store implementation has an entry. The number in brackets represents the key store index which will be used to refer to a specific keystore implementation in the –store option. A label, a human readable description of the implementation, is also present. Some meta-data is also available, such as, the version, serial number and manufacturer of a given implementation. In the above case, only one key store implementation is available. This is the standard on device stores provided by Symbian.

With this knowledge, you can use the –store option to specify the key store implementation a command must use (See Listing Keystore Contents for details of the option).