Minecraft – How to prevent a world from getting too large without installing plug-ins

If you're using Java 7, it has been known to cause issues running Minecraft. I would download java 6, and give that a try.

Also, if your server supports 64-bit, grab that version.

Update:

The only other advice I can offer is to maybe grab a server auto-restart plugin for bukkit, perhaps give one of those a go, and set it to 6am or whenever your server is least busy. Not an exact solution, but perhaps a livable workaround?

You can get ones that give logged on players warnings when the server will restart as well.

One I've used in the past is Simple Restart. It allows you to set up intervals for restarting & warn players at specific times.

I hope this helps

Install Bukkit (note: there is no 1.5 version out yet, you will have to wait possibly a week or more) together with WorldGuard and WorldEdit, and a permission plugin if you want to have several people do things what others cannot. If only you need to do special things, you do not need it.

with WorldEdit you can define a cube in the world and then use WorldGuard to define it as a protected region. Then you can add people to the region to allow them to edit it.

You can also simply deny building for anyone with the ModifyWorld plugin included in PermissionsEX and then allow then to build only in certain WorldGuard regions by adding them to that region. That has the advantage that you automatically prevent people building in the wild.