This map describes the file system types, where they are and what permissions may be required to mount them. The beauty is you don't have to manually mount these file systems or even have them mounted at all. As soon as a user requests something in the map path, that file system is automatically mounted. It's all real. To use this tool, you will need to have the autofs package loaded on your system.
Setup is easy.
The format is as follows. You define a top level directory where your automatic mounts occur. Here's my auto.master file now. You can have many such definitions. You can use pretty much any name you like, however, and it will still work.