MariaDB Innodb_buffer_pool_size based on system memory

Question

According to the MariaDB documentation, "The primary value to adjust innodb_buffer_pool_size on a database server with entirely/primarily XtraDB/InnoDB tables, can be set up to 80% of the total memory in these environments". My question is, is it 80% of total memory including used, or 80% of total free memory? Using my memory info below for my system, which memory is being referred to?

[root@user ~]# free -m
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:          3824       3462        362          0        177       2471
-/+ buffers/cache:        813       3011
Swap:         1999          0       1999

Answer 1

The documentation clearly says "up to 80% of the total memory in these environments". That's total memory. It doesn't mention free or used anywhere. The instructions in the documentation are primarily aimed at setting up dedicated database servers. If you are installing other servers, then you will need to tweak the memory setting accordingly.