Why does MySQLTuner only see 4Gb of RAM? I ran MySQLTuner to verify the configuration of a MySQL database, and it reported this problem:

[!!] Maximum possible memory usage: 40.9G (1022% of installed RAM)


These figures come from computing max_connections multiplied by read_buffer_size + sort_buffer_size + join_buffer_size in the my.cnf file, which effectively gives 40Gb.  

However, the server has 128Gb of RAM.  It appears that MySQL only sees 4Gb.

At first I thought that this was because a MySQL 32-bit binary on a 64-bit OS can effectively access only 4Gb of RAM.  However, both MySQL binary and OS are 64-bit:

root@box# isainfo -v
64-bit amd64 applications
        pclmulqdq aes sse4.2 sse4.1 ssse3 popcnt tscp ahf cx16 sse3 sse2 sse 
        fxsr mmx cmov amd_sysc cx8 tsc fpu 
32-bit i386 applications
        pclmulqdq aes sse4.2 sse4.1 ssse3 popcnt tscp ahf cx16 sse3 sse2 sse 
        fxsr mmx cmov sep cx8 tsc fpu 

root@box# uname -a
SunOS box 5.11 11.2 i86pc i386 i86pc

root@box# file /usr/local/bin/mysql
/usr/local/bin/mysql:  ELF 64-bit LSB executable AMD64 Version 1 [SSE2 SSE FXSR CMOV FPU], dynamically linked, not stripped


and there is no limit on how much memory a process can access:

root@box# ulimit -a
address space limit (kbytes)   (-M)  unlimited
core file size (blocks)        (-c)  unlimited
cpu time (seconds)             (-t)  unlimited
data size (kbytes)             (-d)  unlimited
file size (blocks)             (-f)  unlimited
locks                          (-x)  not supported
locked address space (kbytes)  (-l)  not supported
message queue size (kbytes)    (-q)  not supported
nice                           (-e)  not supported
nofile                         (-n)  256
nproc                          (-u)  29995
pipe buffer size (bytes)       (-p)  5120
max memory size (kbytes)       (-m)  not supported
rtprio                         (-r)  not supported
socket buffer size (bytes)     (-b)  5120
sigpend                        (-i)  128
stack size (kbytes)            (-s)  8192
swap size (kbytes)             (-w)  not supported
threads                        (-T)  not supported
process size (kbytes)          (-v)  unlimited


Is there another way I can see how much memory MySQL is effectively using? 

(In case you ask, shell is tcsh; I cannot tag the post "tcsh" due to insufficient privileges.)
It is not a MySQL thing - MySQLTuner itself cannot see more memory if it is running with 32bit perl interpreter.