xconsole causing rsyslog to fail startup

I am trying to verify that a cronjob ran on WSL2. Sources have told me to check /var/log/syslog. When I navigated there, syslog did not exist. Sources then told me to run service rsyslog start to start the service. When I do so, I get this error message:

deverteuils@:~$ service rsyslog start
 * Starting enhanced syslogd rsyslogd                                                                                mknod: /dev/xconsole: Permission denied
chown: cannot access '/dev/xconsole': No such file or directory
rsyslogd: error writing pid file (creation stage)
: Permission denied
rsyslogd: run failed with error -3000 (see rsyslog.h or try https://www.rsyslog.com/e/3000 to learn what that number means)
rsyslog startup failure: error reading "fork pipe": No such file or directory
                                                                                                              [ OK ]

I then made the change mentioned here to my etc/init.d/rsyslog file. However it did not do the trick:

deverteuils@:/etc/init.d$ service rsyslog start
 * Starting enhanced syslogd rsyslogd                                                                                rsyslogd: error writing pid file (creation stage)
: Permission denied
rsyslogd: run failed with error -3000 (see rsyslog.h or try https://www.rsyslog.com/e/3000 to learn what that number means)
rsyslog startup failure: error reading "fork pipe": No such file or directory
                                                                                                              [ OK ]

I also tried making the change mentioned here to no avail.

My next thought is to just install xconsole, but I'm not having luck with that either and at this point I've spent a lot of time on the issue.

My question is: how can I start up rsyslog without using xconsole and/or download xconsole to my machine?

For reference

deverteuils@:~$ lsb_release -d
Description:    Ubuntu 20.04.5 LTS

deverteuils@:/etc/init.d$ cat rsyslog
#! /bin/sh
### BEGIN INIT INFO
# Provides:          rsyslog
# Required-Start:    $remote_fs $time
# Required-Stop:     umountnfs $time
# X-Stop-After:      sendsigs
# Default-Start:     2 3 4 5
# Default-Stop:      0 1 6
# Short-Description: enhanced syslogd
# Description:       Rsyslog is an enhanced multi-threaded syslogd.
#                    It is quite compatible to stock sysklogd and can be
#                    used as a drop-in replacement.
### END INIT INFO

#
# Author: Michael Biebl <biebl@debian.org>
#

# PATH should only include /usr/* if it runs after the mountnfs.sh script
PATH=/sbin:/usr/sbin:/bin:/usr/bin
DESC="enhanced syslogd"
NAME=rsyslog

RSYSLOGD=rsyslogd
DAEMON=/usr/sbin/rsyslogd
PIDFILE=/run/rsyslogd.pid

SCRIPTNAME=/etc/init.d/$NAME

# Exit if the package is not installed
[ -x "$DAEMON" ] || exit 0

# Read configuration variable file if it is present
[ -r /etc/default/$NAME ] && . /etc/default/$NAME

# Define LSB log_* functions.
. /lib/lsb/init-functions

do_start()
{
        # Return
        #   0 if daemon has been started
        #   1 if daemon was already running
        #   other if daemon could not be started or a failure occured
        start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON -- $RSYSLOGD_OPTIONS
}

do_stop()
{
        # Return
        #   0 if daemon has been stopped
        #   1 if daemon was already stopped
        #   other if daemon could not be stopped or a failure occurred
        start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --retry=TERM/30/KILL/5 --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON
}

#
# Tell rsyslogd to close all open files
#
do_rotate() {
        start-stop-daemon --stop --signal HUP --quiet --pidfile $PIDFILE --exec $DAEMON
}

create_xconsole() {
        XCONSOLE=/dev/xconsole
        if [ "$(uname -s)" != "Linux" ]; then
                XCONSOLE=/run/xconsole
                ln -sf $XCONSOLE /dev/xconsole
        fi
        if [ ! -e $XCONSOLE ]; then
                mknod -m 640 $XCONSOLE p
                chown root:adm $XCONSOLE
                [ -x /sbin/restorecon ] && /sbin/restorecon $XCONSOLE
        fi
}

sendsigs_omit() {
        OMITDIR=/run/sendsigs.omit.d
        mkdir -p $OMITDIR
        ln -sf $PIDFILE $OMITDIR/rsyslog
}

case "$1" in
  start)
        log_daemon_msg "Starting $DESC" "$RSYSLOGD"
        #create_xconsole
        do_start
        case "$?" in
                0) sendsigs_omit
                   log_end_msg 0 ;;
                1) log_progress_msg "already started"
                   log_end_msg 0 ;;
                *) log_end_msg 1 ;;
        esac

        ;;
  stop)
        log_daemon_msg "Stopping $DESC" "$RSYSLOGD"
        do_stop
        case "$?" in
                0) log_end_msg 0 ;;
                1) log_progress_msg "already stopped"
                   log_end_msg 0 ;;
                *) log_end_msg 1 ;;
        esac

        ;;
  rotate)
        log_daemon_msg "Closing open files" "$RSYSLOGD"
        do_rotate
        log_end_msg $?
        ;;
  restart|force-reload)
        $0 stop
        $0 start
        ;;
  try-restart)
        $0 status >/dev/null 2>&1 && $0 restart
        ;;
  status)
        status_of_proc -p $PIDFILE $DAEMON $RSYSLOGD && exit 0 || exit $?
        ;;
  *)
        echo "Usage: $SCRIPTNAME {start|stop|rotate|restart|force-reload|try-restart|status}" >&2
        exit 3
        ;;
esac

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