In it's default configuration strace records every system call a program makes
and prints it to STDOUT. Each line in the trace contains the system call name,
followed by it's arguments in parentheses and it's return value. For example
tracing cat /dev/null is:
open("/dev/null", O_RDONLY) = 3
useful options
-o - output file
-T - show the time spent in system calls
-t - show the wall clock time
-k - record the calling stack trace
-e filter the system calls (probably a good idea if dumping stack traces)