top not working

Question

My below cronjob is not working. What am I doing wrong here??

*/5 * * * * /usr/bin/top -n1 | head -10 >>/tmp/load.txt

Answer 1

The top from procps on Linux at least needs the $TERM environment variable to know how to display things like reverse color and cursor positioning when not in batch mode

So either run:

top -bn1 | head

Or:

TERM=dumb top -n1 | head

Or if you need the output suitable for any given terminal, specify it as

TERM=my-terminal top -n1 | head