Ossec fails to start on fresh installation

[RightFootConsulting]

I ran a fresh installation of Ossec 3.7.0 and instructed it to update the rules as part of the installation. ON running the command:

/var/ossec/bin/ossec-control start

I get the following error:

Starting OSSEC HIDS v3.7.0...
OSSEC analysisd: Testing rules failed. Configuration error. Exiting.

At any rate I read you can check the logs for errors. The logs are not particularly useful.

2024/01/04 13:05:19 ossec-testrule(1230): ERROR: Invalid element in the configuration: 'rule_dir'.
2024/01/04 13:05:19 ossec-testrule(1202): ERROR: Configuration error at '/var/ossec/etc/ossec.conf'. Exiting.
2024/01/04 13:05:19 ossec-testrule(1202): ERROR: Configuration error at '/var/ossec/etc/ossec.conf'. Exiting.

So the first line of the logs says that the "rule_dir" element is invalid. This is the config that was installed by the installation script. The contents of that particular element are:

 <rule_dir pattern=".xml$">etc/rules.d</rule_dir>

So I have no idea what's invalid about it and I don't know if I should open up an issue. Thoughts?