After "megasas: Failed to init firmware" kdump hangs "Waiting for sda..." in RHEL5

Issue

• Customer is trying to kdump to local disk. kdump init is hanging at:

Waiting for sda...

• Further investigation shows the drive controller is not initializing properly:

megasas: Waiting for FW to come to ready state  
megasas: FW now in Ready state  
megasas: Failed to init firmware

• The megaraid_sas (megasas) driver is able to initialize the firmware during the normal (non-kdump) boot.
• This issue can be replicated on an IBM System x3690 X5 wth LSI Logic / Symbios Logic MegaRAID SAS 9240 (ServeRAID M1015 SAS/SATA Controller).