Angular2 Whatsapp Clone, Connection refused to meteor mongo api

Hi There.

I’ve been following the guide at : https://www.angular-meteor.com/tutorials/whatsapp2/ionic/setup
to learn how to code in angular2.

But after step 3: Realtime meteor server, i keep getting connection refused to the api server.

GET http://localhost:3000/sockjs/info?cb=**** net::ERR_CONNECTION_REFUSED - zone.js:101

rendering the tutorial useless.
I even tried cloning the git repo, same error.

I’m running the app from commandline in Debian 8.5 VM using:

screen -dmS api meteor

to start the api server, running on localhost:3000 and

screen -dmS app ionic serve

to start the app, running on localhost:8100

I’ve spend the better part of the last 2 days, trying to solve this problem to no avail.

What am I missing here?