Limit top command to only display top X processes on command line
I use a trick, specially for batch mode. I pipeline the exit to grep, with option "-A", to show N lines after match.
As in the first line of top there is something like: "load average", I grep that, for instance:
$ top -d 5 -b|grep "load average" -A 15
top - 09:42:34 up 38 min, 1 user, load average: 0.22, 0.39, 0.53
Tasks: 294 total, 2 running, 291 sleeping, 0 stopped, 1 zombie
%Cpu(s): 3.5 us, 0.9 sy, 0.0 ni, 94.6 id, 0.5 wa, 0.3 hi, 0.1 si, 0.0 st
KiB Mem : 8065144 total, 2213800 free, 2733524 used, 3117820 buff/cache
KiB Swap: 24575996 total, 24575996 free, 0 used. 4613128 avail Mem
PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
2744 lrojas 20 0 3376820 752000 116588 R 20.2 9.3 9:30.01 firefox
1869 lrojas 9 -11 566164 18336 14300 S 5.2 0.2 2:35.78 pulseaudio
2401 lrojas 20 0 740092 200456 87256 S 2.4 2.5 0:57.29 skype
2402 lrojas 20 0 617872 172924 76172 S 2.2 2.1 0:57.17 skype
1333 root 20 0 459028 60992 48024 S 1.6 0.8 0:36.14 Xorg
1838 lrojas 20 0 2103336 184468 64724 S 1.4 2.3 0:56.85 gnome-shell
2359 lrojas 20 0 741212 35068 24620 S 1.4 0.4 0:06.83 gnome-terminal-
2404 lrojas 20 0 1867556 229912 83988 S 0.8 2.9 0:19.63 thunderbird
1249 apache 20 0 461436 10196 3404 S 0.4 0.1 0:00.57 httpd
This way it will continue in batch mode, always showing only the first N lines of output.
Completely standard solution, for any version of top.
> top
then, press n to set maximum tasks displayed.
When operating top, one of the most important key is help (h or ?) to see the available options (n is given in help).
UPDATE (after the the comment):
PERSONAL Configuration File might help for the batch mode. Run top then set the maximum tasks displayed with n and use the W interactive command to create or update the configuration file. top will be ran according to the configuration file next time.
Perhaps you should add the -b parameter which runs top in the batch mode: watch -n 5 'top -b -d 5 | head -n 10'