alright, I'm running a gentoo system with kernel 2.6.0-beta11, with alsa compiled into the kernel for my nforce2 mobo.

after installing jack and ardour, both seem to be working, but I can't get any sound into ardour from my line or mic jacks. I've been using qjackctl to launch jack, and jack and ardour seem to be communicating, but I can't get any of my soundcard's inputs to feed any sound to ardour. I can hear myself fine through my PC speakers.

A good jack-ardour howto or config guide would be a lot of help, as I'm new to both software packages. a screenshot of my desktop with qjackctl and the ardour mixer window is here: http://hollywoodb.tripod.com/screenshot.png

In the ardour mixer window in the screenshot, the mixer level shows no sound, but it should show something since I've got my guitar & signal processor cranked to the point of distortion.

Also, when I click the green INPUT button in the mixer window in the screenshot I can pick in1 or in2, but no matter what the button still only says INPUT, and doesn't seem to be keeping my selections there.

And I have my alsa mixer levels, etc, set correctly.

again, said screenshot: http://hollywoodb.tripod.com/screenshot.png

Ok, I don't know if this will be of any help but I've recently installed the ALSA drivers in my Red Hat 9 and got them running alright...
http://ccrma-www.stanford.edu/planetccrma/software/
Try this URL. It has some procedures on configuring the alsa mixer and saving the settings. Don't know if will solve your input problem though.
Eitherways, you should check the page... it's quite interesting and may have a link to some solutions!

Luck! and sorry if it wasn't much help but I am far too newbie to do any better!