Can't move keystores between machines?

Question

Anyone have any experience with JCE?
I'm quite new to it.
We're trying to do some encryption. We create and store the key thusly:
package keystore;
import java.io.*;
import java.security.*;
import javax.crypto.*;
import java.util.*;
public class CreateKey {
    public static void main(String args[])
        throws Exception
        KeyStore ks = KeyStore.getInstance("JCEKS");
        char[] pw = "password".toCharArray();
        String alias = "testkey";
        ks.load(null, pw);
        SecureRandom sRandom = new SecureRandom();
        KeyGenerator kg = KeyGenerator.getInstance("AES");
        kg.init (256,sRandom);
        SecretKey sk = kg.generateKey();
        ks.setKeyEntry(alias, sk, pw, null);
        FileOutputStream fos = new FileOutputStream("new.keystore");
        ks.store(fos, pw);
        fos.close();
}Then, you can use keytool to list the key:
$ keytool -list -keystore new.keystore  -storepass password -storetype JCEKS
Keystore type: JCEKS
Keystore provider: SunJCE
Your keystore contains 1 entry
testkey, Aug 18, 2005, keyEntry,But, if I take that file, new.keystore, and transfer it to another machine, then the file can't be read. keytool fails. We get an invalid header error, or corrupted stream error.
The goal was to make a single key file that we can use across our vast array of developers, testers, servers, etc.
So, anyway, has anyone encountered this before? Seems odd to me that they keystore would be bound to the machine (for example, what if I stored the keystore on a thumb drive or smart card). Could it be the provider I'm using?

Answer 1

Using your code I have just created a keystore on Fedora Core 3 with JDK1.5.0_04. I transferred it to a Windows XP machine and ran
keytool -list -keystore new.keystore -storepass password -storetype JCEKS
which gave the expected result of
Keystore type: JCEKS
Keystore provider: SunJCE
Your keystore contains 1 entry
testkey, 19-Aug-2005, keyEntry,
I ran against the 1.4.2 keytool on Fedora Core 3 with the same result.
There has to be something more! Some other difference.
How did you transfere the file? Did you user FTP and if so did you make sure you used 'binary' mode?
Are use using the same version of JDK on both machines?