I have a parent directory, within which there are many many subfolders and in each of those subfolders is a directory called "start". I somehow want to make a tarball from the parent directory and have it only include the directories called "start" but to maintain the parent directory sub-structure. How can I do this?
Assuming Bash, you can use extended globbing to select only the wanted subdirectories.
Exemple: Let's create a dummy directory hierarchy
$ mkdir -p test/{top,bottom}/{start,finish}/{one,two}
$ find test
test
test/bottom
test/bottom/finish
test/bottom/finish/one
test/bottom/finish/two
test/bottom/start
test/bottom/start/one
test/bottom/start/two
test/top
test/top/finish
test/top/finish/one
test/top/finish/two
test/top/start
test/top/start/one
test/top/start/two
Now, to create a tar archive with only directories start and their content:
$ tar cvf test.tar test/**/start
a test/bottom/start
a test/bottom/start/one
a test/bottom/start/two
a test/top/start
a test/top/start/one
a test/top/start/two
$
Note that extended globbing must be enable to use this solution.
$ shopt extglob
extglob on
If it is not enabled, use
$ shopt -s extglob