[turquoisevar]

Is there a particular reason you’re not putting .zshrc in the user’s home folder ~/.zshrc?

In any case, / root and /etc (to an extend) are part of the system volume (or rather the system volume snapshot if we want to be pedantic). With some exceptions Apple considers that fair game.

There’s a bunch of symlinking and firmlinking done to make it look like one coherent whole but only the stuff on the data volume is safe.

That said, if for whatever reason you need to put something in root you can create your own synthetic firmlink[0] with /etc/synthetic.conf.

I believe some also reported success by simply making a subdirectory under /etc and use that instead but YMMV.

hoakly goes into extensive detail with what changed with volumes on macOS (back in 2019 I believe): https://eclecticlight.co/2021/01/13/big-sur-boot-volume-layo...

0: https://derflounder.wordpress.com/2020/01/18/creating-root-l...