Exception: javax.net.ssl.SSLException: java.lang.RuntimeException: Unexpected error: java.security.InvalidAlgorithmParameterException: the trustAnchors parameter must be non-empty

If you get this error, do not worry:

Downloading: https://s3.amazonaws.com/Minecraft.Download/launcher/launcher.pack.lzma Exception: javax.net.ssl.SSLException: java.lang.RuntimeException: Unexpected error: java.security.InvalidAlgorithmParameterException: the trustAnchors parameter must be non-empty

This just means that your ssl certs are not correct for the java version you have installed. In my case I was also getting the following error:

$ ls -l /etc/ssl/certs/java/cacerts ls: cannot access /etc/ssl/certs/java/cacerts: No such file or directory

So, this command fixed my issue:

scp -pr root@a_different_box_with_working_certs:/etc/ssl/certs/java/cacerts /etc/ssl/certs/java/.

Hope that helps you too.

This was found using the following version of java:

$ java -version
openjdk version "1.8.0_20" OpenJDK Runtime Environment (build 1.8.0_20-b23) OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM (build 25.20-b22, mixed mode)