oclhashcat-lite Bruteforce Question

[NeonFlash]

Hi,

I would like to understand the bruteforce mask attack options in oclhashcat-lite. It is not clear, at least not as much as in oclhashcat-plus, probably because the attacks are more complicated here.

If I want to cover the entire key space for length 8 for lowercase +digits, I use the following syntax:

oclhashcat-lite32.exe -m <mode> -n 400 -1 ?l?d <hash> ?1?1?1?1?1?1?1?1

However, when the attack starts, it says, trying plaintexts from length 1 to 55 (maybe this is displayed by default).

Now, I press the s key to display the status and I can see it showing the plaintext being tried currently and the length as:

Plaintext.length=7
Plaintext=***z4ny

So, what makes it start the attack with length 7?

Also, what do those asterisks in the plaintext indicate? Are they like wild card characters? So, oclhashcat-lite would try all the possible values for lowercase + digits for the first 3 places (which are masked) and the remaining 4 are fixed to: z4ny??

How, do I make it cover the entire key space for length 8?

Possibly, disable markov and set both, --pw-min and --pw-max to length 8?

Code:

oclhashcat-lite32.exe -m <mode> --markov-disable --pw-min=8 --pw-max=8 <hash> ?1?1?1?1?1?1?1?1

Is this Ok?