Steps to reproduce: $ nmcli connection add \ con-name test \ connection.autoconnect false \ connection.permissions "user:$USER" \ type wifi \ wifi.mode infrastructure \ wifi.ssid test \ wifi-sec.key-mgmt wpa-eap \ 802-1x.eap peap \ 802-1x.ca-cert ~/ca.crt \ 802-1x.domain-suffix-match f.q.d.n \ 802-1x.phase2-auth mschapv2 \ 802-1x.identity test \ 802-1x.password-flags 2 Connection 'test' (56783ae9-144e-4977-8dcf-fe1acc08436b) successfully added. $ nmcli connection show test | sed -n 's,^802-1x.ca-cert:.*/,,p' | hd 00000000 63 61 2e 63 72 74 0a |ca.crt.| 00000007 $ systemsettings # - go to WiFi & Networking # - select test connection # - enable autoconnect # - apply $ nmcli connection show test | sed -n 's,^802-1x.ca-cert:.*/,,p' | hd 00000000 63 61 2e 63 72 74 25 30 30 0a |ca.crt%00.| 0000000a In some cases there was a space character appended instead, but I couldn't reproduce that right now.