select * and save into a text file failed

Hi,

When I try to save a query result into a text file from “select * from a_table”, once I got:

out of memory for query result

under psql

Once got killed:

My_db=# select * from a_table;

Killed

bash-2.05b$

And once it caused PG crashed.

My PG version is:

select version();

                                                 version

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 PostgreSQL 8.0.3 on i686-pc-linux-gnu, compiled by GCC gcc (GCC) 3.2.3 20030502 (Red Hat Linux 3.2.3-49)

(1 row)

The table has 6287585 rows, and takes 2805000 bytes.

From the PG log, I can only find:

could not send data to client: Connection reset by peer

could not send data to client: Broken pipe

unexpected EOF on client connection

How can I save PG data into text file without using pg_dump?

Thanks,

PS: I know pg_dump, but it is not my option.