Demystifying Certificate Updates: A Visual Guide for Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, and RHEL Systems

Ever wondered how update-ca-certificates on Debian/Ubuntu, and update-ca-trust on Fedora/RHEL-based Linux systems works?

If you take the time to read through the respective man pages, you will find that they already do a quite decent job at explaining the mechanisms, but who’s got time nowadays?

So, without further ado, let me present a flowchart that should give you a 90% overview for these architectures.

Please note that these diagrams reflects my current understanding and may be incomplete or outdated. No guarantee of accuracy is provided.

Debian/Ubuntu: update-ca-certificates

Disclaimer: May be incomplete or outdated. See original article for details.

More information can be found here:

• Debian Docs: Link

Fedora/RHEL: update-ca-trust

Disclaimer: May be incomplete or outdated. See original article for details.

More information can be found here:

• Fedora Docs: Link

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Docs: Link

Disclaimer: The diagram reflects my current understanding and may be incomplete or outdated. No guarantee of accuracy is provided.

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Find the original drawings for you to modify on GitHub.