When you need to become root you should always use the "su -" format, the hyphen is important and sets the user environment correctly. Yes, installing software as root is the normal way to it.
If you're not used to managing a server then you'd probably find using Webmin a good option, have a look at this page:
Webmin Installation and Configuration in Debian and Ubuntu Linux -- Debian Admin Webmin is a useful web interface for managing your server, I'd suggest you install it and become familiar with it.
You should be able to see if you have the named group with the following:
and see which user named is running with (obviously, start it first):
Code:
ps aux | grep named