I'm so frustrated.
I have almost no experience with setting up printers and networking through Linux. That being said, I need some help. In fact, I don't even know if this setup is possible, and for all I know, I might need a Window's solution.
I'm a hardcore Linux guy, so talk to me that way - It's printing that I don't quite understand. For the most part, the Printing stuff is handled mostly by the windows guys, so that's why I'm asking here.
Here's the setup. I have an office. There is a printer, and a database. Unfortunately, since most of the other people in the oranization has no idea what linux is, for the past 5 years, have developed an Access database with all user information in it. Therefore, they do not want to change this.
To make matters worse, they want to use access and do not want to upgrade to an SQL install, so therefore, are using the default JET database, which cannot be **successfully** used through a WAN environment (get to this in a sec).
Ok, so, there's 1 printer, a linux server running Samba, and a Windows Workstation at the office. Everything in this environment works fine.
Then we have remote users. The business owner wants people to remotely access the database, and print on the local printers (not the printer in the remote location). A VPN cannot be setup, this is due to the JET database, its unbelievably slowwwwwwwww. So, then I tried setting up RDP connection, which work, but all these printers are USB, so they are not "attaching" themselves to the RDP connection properly. I have referred to some Windows docs on how to do this, but they simply do not work, or I'm doing something wrong.
So there are a few remote networks, with laptops and/or workstations. Either way, the remote places have their own local printers, but the business owner wants to all the users to print to their local printers from the remote database, through an RDP connection.
Is there any way, that anyone knows, how to basically tie all the printers together to be shared together, no matter what. I've tried using a web service (printshare), which is fine, but definately not the solution i would ever implement or trust. Ideally, I would want to just setup individual "small" print servers (or REALLY ideally - 1 single print server), that would allow any computer to print to any printer. The problem with all this, that is different than a normal setup is that each location is is a different WAN - each location is on a totally different network - remotely.
Any ideas, insight, or anything?