Privilege to Set Default Database in MySQL

'insert' permission should be all you need to do an insert:

create database stack;
create user dummy;
create table stack.t(v integer primary key);
grant insert on stack.* to dummy;

as dummy:

insert into stack.t values(1);
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec)

select * from stack.t;
ERROR 1142 (42000): SELECT command denied to user 'dummy'@'localhost' for table 't'

and the grant like this will even apply to tables created after the grant was made - it gives a database privilege

As you also want to select you will also need to grantselecton stack.* to dummy

It could be your admin user is connecting from admin@127.0.0.1.

Assuming admin is the actual user you have privileges on, try connecting through:

> mysql -h 127.0.0.1 -u admin -p

The way MySQL handles users, the host is very important, and in this case 127.0.0.1 is different than localhost.

If your phpMyAdmin user has access to the mysql database, you can the following statement to see what user/host combinations exist on your install.

 SELECT User, Host FROM mysql.user