For wiking with moin on nginx, I tried a lot and finally got it work. I’m using Moin 1.7.2 with Nginx 0.7.19 on Slackware linux.

As you may know, there is a mod called mod_wsgi which is an implementation of the Python Web Server Gateway Interface for the nginx web server. However, mod_wsgi code is about 7 months old and only tested with nginx 0.5.x, currently cannot be built with nginx 0.7.x. I didn’t test it with nginx 0.6.x, but there are some patches. For more information, check http://hg.mperillo.ath.cx/nginx/mod_wsgi/file/tip/README (CANNOT access from m^therf^cking China mainland network).

I intended to use the public wiki mode, but unfortunately, haven’t work it out on fastcgi. Any help is welcome. :-)

It was Cliff who illumined me that nginx can proxy to moin standalone server. Thanks to Cliff.

After some test, here is a block of the working nginx configuration on moinmoin wiki.

...snip...
    server {
	listen       127.0.0.1:80;
	server_name	localhost;
	server_tokens	off;
	root	/srv;

# Begin Core MoinMoin:
	rewrite	^/moin_static[0-9]*/(.*)$	/moin/$1	last;
	rewrite ^/(favicon\.ico)$		/moin/$1	last;

### temporary use
	location = / {
		rewrite .*	/wiki/	redirect;
	}
###

	location /wiki {
		proxy_redirect		http://localhost:8000	/;
		proxy_pass		http://localhost:8000;
		proxy_set_header	X-Real-IP	$remote_addr;
		proxy_set_header	X-Forwarded-For	$proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
		proxy_set_header	Host		$http_host;
		proxy_set_header        X-Moin-Location /wiki/;
	}
# End Core MoinMoin.

	location  ~* \.(jpg|jpeg|gif|png|ico|css|js|zip|tgz|gz|rar|bz2|doc|xls|exe|pdf|ppt|txt|tar|mid|midi|wav|bmp|rtf|mov|avi|mkv|srt|idx|sub)$ {
	    access_log	off;
	    expires	30d;
	}

	location ~* /\.ht {
            deny  all;
	}
    }
...snip...

Then, http://localhost/wiki is ready.
It’s an important point of the X-Moin-Location header. Moin will add that path to the output link.
So far, so good.

[...]
simple-vhost.server-root = "/var/web"
simple-vhost.default-host = "test.lo"
simple-vhost.document-root = "/www"
$HTTP["host"] =~ "^(www\.)?test\.lo$" {
        server.document-root = "/var/web/www"
}
$HTTP["host"] =~ "^blog\.test\.lo$" {
        server.document-root = "/var/web/blog"
}
[...]

Varnish on server 192.168.123.249 VCL file:

backend test {
set backend.host = "192.168.123.248";
set backend.port = "80";
}

acl purge {
"localhost";
"127.0.0.1";
}

sub vcl_recv {
if (req.http.host ~ "^(www|blog\.)?test\.lo$") {
set req.backend = test;
}

else {
error 404 "Unknown virtual host";
}
if (req.request == "PURGE") {
if (!client.ip ~ purge) {
error 405 "Not allowed.";
}
}
if (req.http.Cache-Control ~ "no-cache") {
pass;
}
if (req.request != "GET" && req.request != "HEAD") {
pipe;
}
if (req.http.Expect) {
pipe;
}
if (req.http.Authenticate || req.http.Cookie) {
pass;
}
lookup;
}

sub vcl_pipe {
pipe;
}

sub vcl_pass {
pass;
}

sub vcl_hash {
set req.hash += req.url;
set req.hash += req.http.host;
set req.hash += req.http.cookie;
hash;
}

sub vcl_hit {
if (req.request == "PURGE") {
set obj.ttl = 0s;
error 200 "Purged.";
}
if (!obj.cacheable) {
pass;
}
deliver;
}

sub vcl_miss {
if (req.request == "PURGE") {
error 404 "Not in cache.";
}
fetch;
}

sub vcl_fetch {
if (!obj.valid) {
error;
}
if (!obj.cacheable || obj.http.Set-Cookie|| \
        obj.http.Pragma ~ "no-cache" || \
        obj.http.Cache-Control ~ "no-cache" || \
        obj.http.Cache-Control ~ "private") {
pass;
}
if (req.request == "GET" && req.url ~ "\.(txt|js)$") {
set obj.ttl = 3600s;
}
else {
set obj.ttl = 30d;
}
insert;
}

sub vcl_deliver {
deliver;
}

sub vcl_timeout {
discard;
}

sub vcl_discard {
discard;
}

Above is just a simple example, it works for me currently.
Many people want to see the performance comparison between varnish and squid. Sorry but for now I couldn’t give that, maybe one day;)
I’m afraid that there’s going to be a variety of troubles to shooting, yeah, definitely.