SMTP not making connection

hello I’ve installed the phpVMS 7 beta from github but having trouble getting it to send emails.

 

I’ve configured the laravel smtp settings in env.php and config.php and even config/mail.php but it’s not even making a connection to my SMTP server.

 

the storage/logs/laravel.log has no useful information, is there some way to enable debug logging in there?

I gave up on SMTP and tried mailgun too, it seems no notifications are being sent at all and it’s not a problem with my PHP environment AFAIK because I can use mail() in other applications etc.