Eclipse 3.4 memory problems, freezing and crashing when editing JSP/JSFs

I've been using Eclipse for a while, and generally speaking it is OK. When running Eclipse, I allocate it 250mb in a VMWare image that has 1024mb in total. Eclipse does, however, have a couple of issues that cause me problems:
1) When editing JSPs or JSFs, memory usage slowly increases until is hits the 250mb limit.
2) Eclipse randomly freezes for 5 minutes or so (worse when editing JSPs), I see the virtual hard drive thrash.
Not long after this, Eclipse will freeze/crash

Has anyone got any advice on how to figure out what the problem is? I'm doing a lot of JSP/JSF (RichFaces) work just now and having to restart Eclipse every two hours is getting a bit ridiculous. Closing all open source tabs and requesting the garbage collector run does not solve the memory issue.

I am also running the application in debug mode via the Tomcat plugin, if that makes any difference.
I did have the IBM JBoss add-on, but removed it as it seemed to cause more problems.

Thanks!

Looks like you are hitting heap space issues, the "hang" is probably a major garbage collection, and the subsequent sluggishness probably means that the heap is really low on memory and your are doing nothing but major collections. I suggest increasing the heap size for eclipse. Also, since you are working in a VM, you might want to set both min and max heap sizes the same. Something like this in eclipse.ini:

-Xms512m
-Xmx512m

Thanks - I'll give it a try but I am sure I've had it set like that before and the same thing happens. The memory use just keeps rising until it maxes out and there is no way to free it up, but only when editing JSP/JSFs.

It's really annoying!

In that case there is a memory leak somewhere. You can use tools like VisualVM or Eclipse MAT to track down such things.

250MB for Eclipse? I'm surprised the thing even launches. I've got a 2GB system (non-VM) that often crashes due to lack of memory. Major projects where I'm doing debugging in an embedded Tomcat seem to demand 1GB+. The browser and email client eat up most of the rest of the system RAM. And unfortunately, this particular box can't hold additional RAM, so I have to keep an eye on it.

Cheers Peter. If there is a memory leak, it's in Eclipse itself (or a plug-in I am using). I had to install Galileo at home as Ganymede just totally died (no idea what happened, wouldn't even start). First thing I've noticed is that the memory footprint is about half of Ganymede (but I don't do JSP/JSF at home).

The host machine has 4gb (on 32-bit XP *sigh*), VMWare image 1gb, Eclipse assigned 250mb. Email ect stay on the host, the VMWare image is there purely to run Tomcat/JBoss/Whatever, Eclispe, TFS and a few other tools. Generally speaking though, Eclipse has been fine with 250mb.

Given what I've noticed at home, I might just wipe Eclipse in work and try Galileo; see if that's any better. Someone will need to test it for the environment upgrade anyway.
Hmm...and there's a thought; but one for a different thread.