> Of course, I would love to see clear documentation of how the kernel  
> is defined to behave in this situation. It would certainly be  
> intuitive for mkdir("/net/prodigy/tmp") to force a mount of  
> "/net/prodigy", but defined behavior isn't always intuitive. :)

Maybe I'm confused, but the presence of "/net/prodigy" is *not*
the issue here, and what gets mounted is *not* "/net/prodigy",
but "/net/prodigy/tmp" (do "mount" to confirm or dispute).