Autofs uses /etc/auto.master as its default primary configuration file. We can define two kind of maps in this file, direct and indirect. An example:

# mount point   config file        options
/-              /etc/auto.direct   --ghost

/misc           /etc/auto.misc     --timeout=30 --ghost

+auto.master

First map is a direct map, second is indirect. Entries in a direct map contain an absolute path, instead of the relative path names used in indirect maps. The --ghost option tells the automounter to create empty directories of all the mount points. The /misc folder should be empty.
Let's see the other configuration files, in this example we are going to mount remote file systems using cifs.

/etc/auto.direct:

# directory          mount options                      device to mount
/home/ian/music      -fstype=cifs,ro,soft,user=guest    ://192.168.1.10/music
/home/deb/music      -fstype=cifs,ro,soft,user=guest    ://192.168.1.10/music

Folders /home/ian/music and /home/deb/music should be empty or not exist. In both we can access to te remote folder /music in computer 192.168.1.10

/etc/auto.misc:

# directory  mount options                        device to mount
ian          -fstype=cifs,ro,soft,user=ian        ://192.168.1.10/export/home/ian
deb          -fstype=cifs,ro,soft,user=deb        ://192.168.1.10/export/home/deb

Folders /misc/ian and /misc/deb will be created.