Linux – Show Top Five CPU Consuming Processes with `ps`

Your ps command should work if you sort it properly. From man ps:

   --sort spec
          Specify sorting order.  Sorting syntax is
          [+|-]key[,[+|-]key[,...]].  Choose a multi-letter key from the
          STANDARD FORMAT SPECIFIERS section.  The "+" is optional since
          default direction is increasing numerical or lexicographic
          order.  Identical to k.  For example: ps jax --sort=uid,-ppid,
          +pid

I'm not sure which time you want to sort by but here are the relevant choices:

STANDARD FORMAT SPECIFIERS
   bsdtime     TIME      accumulated cpu time, user + system.  The display
                         format is usually "MMM:SS", but can be shifted to
                         the right if the process used more than 999
                         minutes of cpu time.

   cputime     TIME      cumulative CPU time, "[DD-]hh:mm:ss" format.
                         (alias time).
   etime       ELAPSED   elapsed time since the process was started, in
                         the form [[DD-]hh:]mm:ss.

   etimes      ELAPSED   elapsed time since the process was started, in
                         seconds.

I think from your question that you want cputime. If so, this should give you your desired output:

ps -eo pid,user,args,etime,time,%cpu --sort cputime | grep -v root