Tool for exhaustive API trace with runtime values for any program & its children?

Hi,
I am looking for a tool (command line linux / solaris) which can return a list of api calls at the kernel level (or C/C++ equivalent) for a given program and all its child processes. It should work with scripts (shell, perl, etc...), binaries, code being compiled etc. The basic idea is to profile the program runtime execution in a fine grained manner and figure out the values its reading/writing, files its reading and writing, libraries its accessing etc. to have an exhaustive description of its run.
Thanks,
Jason