Previously, reading from or writing to a character device would not
update the file position on the corresponding filp object. Performing
this update correctly is not trivial: during and after the I/O
operation, the filp object must not be locked. Ideally, read/write
requests on a filp that is already involved in a read/write operation,
should be queued. For now, we optimistically update the file position
at the start of the I/O; this works under the assumptions listed in
the corresponding comment.